The Bog Landing That Changed Aviation

Simon Carver

So, picture this. It is, uh, it's twenty to nine on a Sunday morning, June fifteenth, 1919. You've just spent sixteen hours suspended over the Atlantic in what is essentially a modified World War One bomber with two roaring Rolls-Royce engines. You are freezing, your ears are ringing, and you're looking down at the Connemara coast, desperately searching for anywhere flat to put this, this massive Vickers Vimy down.

Billy Galligan - Author

And what do you see? A lovely, inviting, perfectly flat-looking green field right behind the Marconi wireless station. I- I mean, to a pair of exhausted English lads, it must have looked like a- a proper welcome mat. But, oh boy, the classic Irish trap, Simon. The emerald green. It’s never just grass, is it?

Simon Carver

Exactly! It was, in fact, Derrygimlagh Bog. Absolute, pure, soggy Connemara peat. John Alcock brings the plane down, the wheels touch the- the soft ground, and instead of a smooth roll, the bog just... grips it. It swallows the landing gear whole, and the entire bomber face-plants. Just, boom, nose-first into the mud, tail sticking straight up in the air like a wet bird.

Billy Galligan - Author

Ah, feck. Imagine the- the transition from heroic aviators to face-down in a swamp. But the best part—the absolute best part—is what they said when they climbed out of the wreck. Arthur Whitten Brown, the navigator, climbs out, shakes off the mud, and says, as deadpan as you like, "That's the way to fly the Atlantic." And Alcock is just standing there going, "Well, a shave and a bath would sort us right out."

Simon Carver

It's incredibly British, isn't it? "A shave and a bath." Meanwhile, the locals are just standing there, utterly bewildered. This giant mechanical beast has literally fallen out of the sky into their peat bog. And then, the news gets out. Enter Tom Kenny, known to everyone as "Cork" Kenny, the editor of the Connacht Tribune. He hears a rumor from a local policeman, jumps into his Model T Ford, and drives fifty miles from Galway flat out over dirt roads to get there.

Billy Galligan - Author

Fifty miles in a- a Model T over 1919 Irish roads? That fella must have been rattled to his absolute bones by the time he arrived! But he got the scoop of a lifetime. The first journalist on the scene of the first non-stop transatlantic flight. He must have thought he was dreaming when he saw that tailfin pointing to the heavens.

Simon Carver

Oh, completely. And from there, the- the velocity of their lives just went into warp speed. I mean, within days, they are whisked away from the bog, showered with flowers and Claddagh rings in Galway, mobbed by cheering Trinity College students in Dublin, and then they're in London. Winston Churchill himself—who was Secretary of State for War at the time—hands them the Daily Mail prize. Ten thousand pounds. In 1919! That is, what, over half a million quid in today's money?

Billy Galligan - Author

Half a million! Sure, you could buy half of Dublin for that back then! And then, a week later, they’re at Windsor Castle. King George V pulls out the sword, and suddenly it's Sir John and Sir Arthur. Two fellas who, just days before, were eating stale sandwiches and chipping ice off their wings with bare hands in the middle of a freezing storm over the ocean.

Simon Carver

It’s a fairy-tale ending. But, Billy, this is where the story takes that- that incredibly sharp, tragic turn that just... it leaves you with such a knot in your stomach. It was only six months later. December 1919.

Billy Galligan - Author

Aye. The- the fog. It's always the fog with these stories, isn't it?

Simon Carver

Yes. Alcock was flying a new Vickers Viking amphibian aircraft to an aviation show in Paris. He got caught in bad weather over Normandy, crashed in the fog near Rouen, and died at just twenty-seven years old. Six months after surviving the Atlantic. It’s... it's just devastating.

Billy Galligan - Author

It's heartbreaking, Simon. It really is. Brown, he lived on until 1948, but by all accounts, he was never quite the same after losing Alcock. He lived a quiet life, slipped right out of the spotlight. You know, when Lindbergh did his solo flight in 1927, he made sure to say, "Look, Alcock and Brown showed me it was possible." But for decades, the world sort of... forgot them.

Simon Carver

They really did. But if you go out to Derrygimlagh today, near Clifden, there's no grand airport or massive tourist trap. There’s just a quiet stone cairn marking where they crashed into the bog, and on a hill nearby, there's this beautiful, lonely sculpture shaped like the tailfin of their Vimy bomber, just buffeted by the Connemara wind. It's so quiet.

Billy Galligan - Author

Honestly, a quiet stone marker in a bog where two ordinary fellas did the impossible, almost died six times, and then joked about needing a bath... sure, if that’s not the most Irish way for an epic story to end, I don't know what is. It's grand. Well, that's our look at Alcock and Brown. Talk to you next time, Simon.

Simon Carver

Sounds good, Billy. Bye, everyone.