Trying To Fly to America Before It Was Possible

Research and writing in collaboration with Tomás Campos.

In June of 1919, two daring British aviators made the world's first successful non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from North America to Europe using a modified Vickers Vimey airplane. In just 16 hours, they achieved what up until that point, required days to accomplish by ocean liner. John Alcock and Arthur Brown’s transatlantic flight was celebrated around the world as a monumental achievement, but regular passenger carrying flights were still decades from becoming reality.

In 1919 flight was still in its infancy, and knowledge about aerodynamics and the mechanics of flight were still rudimentary. But a pioneering Italian aircraft builder named Giovanni Battista Caproni was convinced that he could design an airliner to fly passengers from Europe to America. But unlike Alcock and Brown’s heavily modified Vickers Vimey airplane, which carried mostly extra fuel, Caproni’s airliner would have room for 100 passengers and 8 crew members. Numbers that would’ve seemed absurdly ambitious for the era.

Caproni’s giant flying machine was constructed and ready for flight testing in early 1921. Designated as the Ca.60 Transaereo, it was likely the largest aircraft built up until that point. With it’s eight powerful engines and 9 wings arranged in a triple triplane configuration, the odd looking flying boat airliner captured the world's imagination. To many, it would have seemed like a new era of mass air travel was just around the corner. But despite a brief successful test flight sometime in late February or early March, the Transaereo would ultimately prove to be a little too ambitious for it’s time. The Transaereo made two successful flights and only one successful landing. It would take another 20 years before regular passenger flights would begin in 1939 using Boeing 314 flying boat airliners.

Thanks for watching!

[Vaquero]

Never laugh at these pioneers. They are the ones that dreamed, tried, failed, and then tried something else until something worked. They are the ones that pushed our knowledge forward.

[AubriGryphon]

I never imagined calling an aircraft "dangerously stable" before, but there it is.

[frankenwaifu]

This baby was so majestic in Ghibli's The Wind Rises

[thatpersonsmusic]

When I saw this plane in The Wind Rises, I assumed it was being exaggerated, I admire Caproni’s ambitiousness

[TRRailfan]

Mustard doesn’t upload often, but when he does, it’s worth the wait.

[DiamondCalibre]

It warms my heart knowing he died in 1957, meaning he saw not only his trans atlantic flight visions become reality, but also his jet engine visions. (He helped design one of the world's first jet aircraft.) I always hate it when visionaries and forward thinkers die just before their dreams become reality.

[rodrigobraz]

The sheer madness and ambition is oddly inspiring.

[francisdedumo]

"Airplanes are beautiful dreams, Engineers turned dreams into reality."

- Caproni, from The Wind Rise Movie

[pacificamindustriesltd.]

Textbook: "Assume drag is negligible"
Caproni:

[andie_pants]

"Hear me out guys. What if we took that pirate ship over there... and turned its sails horizontal?"

[strakhovandrri]

"But remember this, Japanese boy... airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality."

[outrundoubtrun-lemonadeart]

Fun fact: The Transaereo was featured in the Studio Ghibil film "The Wind Rises, " it was Caproni's dream to get it flying high up in the sky.

[napalmninja]

My boy Giovanni really thought people would be cool with sitting on a wooden bench all the way across the Atlantic.

[christopherdemesa]

“Is the wind still rising, Japanese boy?”

[CaptainGrief]

Another unrecognized achievement of the italians, Caproni was also one of the very first to make a rocket powered aircraft being beaten by just weeks if I'm not wrong

Italian aviation (italy in general) is hugely under appreciated, they literally had the best aerodynamics experts of the era, it shows in how efficient their fighters were from an engineering standpoint

[a]

Actually Caproni's plane crashed into the water because the sandbags he used for ballast, to simulate the weight of the passengers on every seat, weren't tied down, so they may have slid to the back of the plane's passenger compartment during takeoff. Also, the pilot raised the nose too rapidly without reaching max takeoff speed.

[riliryrimaddyvia]

2020
What's a plane: it's a thing which can fly

In the past

What's a plane: it's just a train with wings.

[skenzyme]

More highly anticipated premiere than The Mandalorian. THIS IS THE PLANE

[ironDsteele]

"Enormous ocean liners were crossing the ocean." *Not all of them*

[marcleslac]

Imagine if caproni saw the a380. Hed be stunned.