In 1969, everyone from Prince Michael of Kent to Billy Butlin competed in a dash between London and New York aboard tandems, sedan chairs and jump jets. Rachel Harris-Gardiner recalls a madcap forerunner of Race Across the World
If you had been walking along the streets of eastern Manhattan on 5 May 1969, you would have been greeted by a curious sight. Hovering in the skies above the great metropolis like a giant steel kestrel was one of the most technically advanced military aircraft in history. Instead of rolling down a runway, the plane slowly descended vertically to the ground in a cloud of dust. Once it touched down, its canopy opened and a pilot hopped out and zoomed off towards the Empire State Building in a red motorcycle.
What on Earth was going on? And why was the pilot in such a hurry? The answer is that he was one of the frontrunners in an event called the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race, and he was just a matter of miles away from scooping a £6,000 prize for bagging first in class.
The giant steel kestrel – which was, in fact, a Hawker Siddeley Harrier, among the Royal Air Force’s most prized pieces of kit – was just one of the many weird and wonderful vehicles to convey competitors across the Atlantic in the seven-day competition. Tandems, sedan chairs, speedboats and hot-air balloons were all deployed in an attempt to cover the 3,400 miles that separated the start and end points as quickly as possible. With everyone from racing drivers and athletes to millionaire businessmen and high-ranking royals throwing their hats into the ring, it’s hardly surprising that this madcap, high-speed contest made headlines around the world.
Simple but deceptive
The format of the race – which was staged to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first non-stop Atlantic flight, completed by a Vickers Vimy biplane bomber in 1919 – was both simple and deceptively complex. Entrants, known as ‘runners’, paid their entry fee and were given a week to travel between London and New York in the shortest time possible, with at least part of the journey undertaken by air. Runners could attempt the trip in either direction and could make as many attempts as they liked in the time available. Prizes were awarded for different classes of aircraft (of which there were six, plus the fastest time overall) and different routes, from both starting points.
An extra layer of complexity was added by the fact that runners had to stamp their time card at each end of the journey: the summit of the Post Office Tower in London and the top of New York’s Empire State Building. Securing a seat in the fastest aircraft available wasn’t a guarantee of victory; the contestants had to work out the quickest way to reach the checkpoint from their landing point, using whatever transport they could.
The Daily Mail had organised races for decades. It had sponsored a motor boat race (the Harmsworth Trophy) from 1903, put on a Round Britain air race from 1911–13, and staged a 1959 dash between London and Paris, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of Louis Blériot’s first Channel crossing. However, the 1969 competition was the biggest yet, and attracted the support of commercial sponsors such as Aer Lingus, who provided prize funds and helped to recruit celebrities. This growth is reflected in the number of competitors. While the 1959 event inspired 135 attempts at the journey, the transatlantic race attracted more than 300 individual entries.
Among them was Squadron Leader Tom Lecky-Thompson, the pilot of the Harrier that made the dramatic landing in eastern Manhattan. Lecky-Thompson registered the fastest London to New York leg of the race (6 hours, 11 minutes – undertaking multiple air-to-air refuellings).
“It was incredible coming up the East river with Manhattan in the background, then seeing your landing spot amid this big line of piers,” remembered Lecky-Thompson. “There were numerous light aircraft whizzing around to get photographs of me but I had to ignore them and concentrate on flying… Everything went according to plan.”
Despite this showstopping entrance, Lecky-Thompson almost never made it to the start line. Only three pilots at the time were qualified to fly the Harrier, and the most senior, Mike Adams, had been injured in an accident at the end of February, leaving Lecky-Thompson and Graham Williams to handle the race. The RAF left it until the last minute to register, having been persuaded that the exercise would be a useful way to promote the Harrier (which was the world’s first vertical take-off combat aeroplane to enter operational service) to the American military.
The initial idea was for the Harrier to take off from Horse Guards Parade, but the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works vetoed this. British Rail then offered a coal yard near St Pancras station, which soon assumed the nickname ‘RAF St Pancras’.
Britain’s military dominated the supersonic classes. The RAF Harrier was probably the most eye-catching winner. Yet the fastest outright time was set by one of the three Royal Navy F-4K Phantom aircraft that entered the race. A crew under Lieutenant Commander Peter Goddard registered an air time of 4 hours, 46 minutes and 57 seconds, which enabled them to post an unbeatable overall
time of 5 hours, 11 minutes.
The British Army was also determined to get in on the act, and made its mark by employing Prince Michael of Kent as a runner, representing the Royal Hussars. The prince’s transfer from a Vickers VC10 jet airliner to a helicopter on landing at Wisley in Surrey gained some attention (the prince exited the plane via a rope), but he was not among the class winners.
Racing in tandem
Transfers between airports and the checkpoints provided the greatest opportunity for creativity and showmanship. Mary Rand, winner of the long jump in the 1964 Olympic games, ran through London’s streets for part of her journey before getting the Tube and a car to Stansted airport, where she jumped on a Capitol International Airways flight to New York. A TV personality named Slim Hewitt travelled across London in a sedan chair carried by a team of women wearing mini skirts. His route included a hovercraft across the channel to Boulogne and a hot air balloon to Luxembourg before heading to the States. Formula 1 driver Stirling Moss employed a combination of a speedboat and a motorcycle to reach his waiting private jet. Two London businessmen, David Bamford and Gordon Proctor, used a tandem bicycle to reach the airport.
Bamford and Proctor weren’t the only businessmen to take part in the race. The Chartered Business Jet class for the London to New York route was won by Sir Billy Butlin of holiday camp fame, whose journey on a Hawker Siddeley HS 125 took 11 and a half hours.
Other competitors were notable for their connections to previous flight pioneers. The first runner to set off from London, the 18-year-old art student Anne Alcock, was the niece of John Alcock, who had piloted that pioneering flight across the Atlantic in 1919. And, to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1919 flight, a team of apprentices based at Brooklands in Surrey built a replica of the trailblazing Vickers Vimy bomber.
Another Vickers aeroplane carried one of the largest and most outlandish teams. Businessman Tony Drewery assembled a ‘Brigade’ of businessmen hoping to promote British exports in the States. The Brigade dressed in identical pinstripe suits, bowler hats and Union Jack ties and travelled between the airfield and the Empire State Building in two double-decker buses. Drewery had made a bet with an American runner flying in the opposite direction that he would beat his time, with the loser having to buy the winner a new suit. Drewery got his suit.
The long game
Other contestants aimed to use the event to promote their own smaller businesses. One of these was Donald McNab, a director of an advertising agency, who told the Middlesex County Times he hoped to sell toys made by Terry Toys once he arrived in New York. “I have not failed yet and I do not intend to fail now,” he announced bullishly before embarking on his journey. McNab was right – he didn’t fail – but his time of 57 hours and 20 minutes hardly threatened to win him a prize for fastest in class.
However, McNab still managed to cross the Atlantic almost 100 hours quicker than poor Fred Clauser. The American pilot had to make an emergency landing near the Faroe Islands and almost had his aircraft taken away as scrap. He eventually rejoined the race and posted a time of 153 hours and 17 minutes.
No such issues confronted the most unlikely of all the 300 contestants, a five-year-old chimpanzee called Tina. The ape, who had appeared in Brooke Bond tea adverts on TV, was conveyed to Heathrow airport in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce with her owner, Twycross Zoo’s Molly Badham, before crossing the Atlantic on a British Overseas Airways Corporation flight.
We will never know what Tina made of her flight. What we can say with some certainty, however, is that the Transatlantic Air Race’s combination of state-of-the-art engineering, celebrity stardust and unbridled eccentricity proved a hit with the watching British public.
It was, in some ways, staged at the perfect time – at a moment when air travel was becoming more affordable, when it was moving from the realm of the idiosyncratic war veteran to the massed ranks of holidaymakers. This was also a period when televisions were becoming increasingly common in UK homes. The race’s organising committee was able to harness this rising medium to their advantage, securing several hours of coverage on the BBC, kicked off with a launch show presented by Cliff Michelmore.
Many commentators today describe the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race as the last of the great air adventures. It’s true that, despite its popularity and blanket media exposure, it was never repeated. Changing economic conditions and global tensions heading into the 1970s meant that people had less disposable income, and different priorities.
But could it be staged in the future? Despite the popularity of the recent globe-trotting TV show Race Across the World, it’s unlikely that it could take place again in a similar form – current concerns over carbon emissions and climate change would see to that.
However, alternative air fuel technologies could create opportunities for more airborne adventuring and record-breaking. Once large-scale electric aviation becomes viable, a whole new set of records for distance, altitude and speed will open up. Commercial and government air organisations will be looking to make their name in this new field. So maybe we haven’t seen the last of the transatlantic air race. Anyone for an electric-powered tandem?
Rachel Harris-Gardiner is a motorsport journalist and editor of the Speedqueens blog, with a special interest in female race and rally drivers around the world. Watch past episodes of the BBC One show Race Across the World