On April 6, 1924, four U.S. Army planes, each with two crewmembers, took off from what was then Sand Point Airfield in Seattle.
Their goal was to complete the first circumnavigation of the globe by air.
The four planes were Douglas World Cruisers and they were named Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans.
Due to weight restrictions, no more than 300 pounds of supplies could be loaded into each open-cockpit plane. And that meant that some otherwise standard equipment, such as parachutes and life preservers, got left behind.
Although each member of the World Flight carried a stuffed monkey as a mascot.
This monkey was named “Maggie” and flew on the Boston plane. (Image courtesy National Air and Space Museum).
The journey was far from easy. On their way around the world, the team encountered freezing temperatures, typhoons, mechanical breakdowns, crashes, and other obstacles.
But, despite losing two of the original four planes, on September 28, 1924, the Chicago, the New Orleans, plus the Boston II (a replacement) landed back at Sand Point.
The journey had taken 175 days, the crew had made 74 stops, and the team had covered about 27,550 miles.
Today, that first flight around the world is marked with a concrete pillar on a small island at the entrance of the former Naval Air Station where the planes took off.
At the top of the pillar is a large pair of bird wings. At the bottom, a plaque with the dates of the flight and the names of the crewmen and their planes.
This week Seattle is marking the 100th anniversary of the first successful round-the-world flight with celebrations at the Museum of Flight and at Magnuson Park, the site of the former Sand Point Airfield.
From September 26 to 29, more an a dozen aircraft representing decades of around-the-world record flights will be on view in the parking lot of Seattle’s Museum of Flight. Inside the museum, there will be flight lectures and films.
A full schedule for the museum events is online.
Over at Magnuson Park, there’s an afternoon of free commemoration events scheduled for September 28th.
Here’s a video about the first round-the-world flight from the National Archives.
And here’s a video about the around-the-world flight aimed at a very young audience, courtesy of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.
