Bleriot´s Channel Crossing by Plane (1909)

On 25 July, the English Channel was crossed  by plane for the first time.

The pilot was a 36 year old French engineer, Louis Bleriot. He himself built the 24-horse power monoplane with its three-cylinder engine and what from the photographs look like pram wheels.

He flew the unpromising-looking machine from Sangatte  on the French coast near Calais to Dover Castle in just 37 minutes, landing in a field near Dover after a 43 minute flight. In doing so, he won the Daily Mail prize of  £ 1,000  for piloting the first heavier-than-air machine across the Channel. His average speed was 40 mph (64 Km /h ). It was a huge success in every way, and Bleriot was surrounded by crowds of admirers.

Fellow aviators warned Bleriot that cross-winds could bring his plane down the Channel, but the as confident that he could do it. He was very sure that his monoplane was a sounder, sager machine than the biplanes that other aviators were using.

A French destroyer waited mid-Channel, in case Bleriot was forced to ditch in the sea and needed to be rescued. In fact it was not needed, as Bleriot waited for several days until the weather conditions were just right for the attempt. The flight went without any hitch at all.

 This short flight was an historic moment. Britain´s main defence, and an incredibly effective defence, had always been the English Channel Now that it could be crossed by air, there was a new vulnerability.  By the time of the Second World War, when aircraft had improved enormously in reliability and range, it would be possible for whole fleets of planes to cross the Channel, bomb the Channel ports and cross South-east England to bomb London itself. The Battle of Britain proved how the new technology put Britain´s national security at risk.

It was Bleriot´s innocent-looking flight that heralded the Battle of Britain.