From The Archives: Flying Bomber Across Atlantic—85 Years Ago In Aviation Week

The cover of our May 1941 edition featured a Pratt & Whitney advertisement hailing the deliveries of U.S.-built Consolidated Liberator bombers to the UK, which was fighting for survival against Nazi Germany.

But the scoop was inside the magazine, where Capt. V. Edward Smith, a retired airline pilot who had flown the missions, revealed details of a secretive “bomber ferry” over the North Atlantic.

“Mass flights across the Atlantic, in mid-winter . . . have now been demonstrated as a feasible delivery system,” Smith wrote in his five-page account.

“It is faster and safer than shipping them by boat and serves to release many tons of shipping for other needed war supplies. The most dangerous part of our ferry work was always the return to Canada by boat.”

Smith’s biggest mishap: He was caught smoking in flight and fined $100—more than $2,200 in current dollars. Seven months later, the U.S. entered World War II on the UK’s side after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

See the cover and read the full issue of the May 1941 issue of our magazine, then known as Aviation, including the article on page 30.  

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