After the Armistice the NC’s were not needed in Europe, but they were ready and the Navy felt sure that they could fly the Atlantic. On May 6, 1919, three NC’s took off from Far Rockaway, New York, on one of the most significant flights in history. After making a stop at Trepassey Bay, Newfoundland, the NC’s with “Jack” Towers in command, flew through the stormy Atlantic night to land the following morning on the water near Horta in the Azores. The planes were badly battered, and the crews were weary. Only the NC-4 Lieutenant Commander A. C. Read in charge, flew on to Lisbon, Portugal, and finally to Plymouth, England, in the first transatlantic flight. [Illustration] A month after the first transatlantic flight of the U. S. Navy NC boats, two Royal Flying Corps pilots, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Brown, flying a two-engined Vickers Vimy biplane, flew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland. To those two hardy adventurers goes the credit for the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by airplane. MEN AND MACHINES WORLD WAR I Slow as she had been in starting, America picked up speed and finished World War I with a record definitely creditable. American aviation discarded its swaddling clothes forever. At the time of the Armistice, American fliers had flown more than 3,500,000 miles in battle and dropped 275,000 pounds of explosives on the Germans. In plane-to-plane combat our military pilots showed a courage and initiative unequaled by ally or foe. With our entry into the war, our infant aviation industry also picked up speed. With typical American energy it built up an enviable production record before the end of the war. As America had no combat airplane designs at the start of the war, our industry turned out planes and engines of foreign design. Aircraft factories built English DH-4 observation planes, Handley-Page bombers, and SE-5 fighter planes. We did build one plane of American design, the Curtiss JN-4 _Jenny_ training plane. The _Jenny_ was the best training plane in the world at that time. Our factories built hundreds of them in 1917 and 1918. Practically all American and many Allied fliers received their flight training in the famous old _Jennies_. The science of flight was only slightly more than ten years old when men decided to use the airplane as a military weapon in actual warfare. Therefore it can be understood that the fighting planes of World War I were fairly elementary in every way. They were fairly standard in design and construction--all biplanes with enclosed fuselage and two-wheel and tail-skid landing gear. The French Nieuport-27 fighter plane, brought out in 1915, was considered the outstanding aërial achievement of its day. The first of the British fighters was the Sopwith _Camel_. The Nieuport-27 was followed in 1916 by the famous French Spad and in 1917 by the Nieuport-28. The Germans used the Fokker fighter designed by Anthony Fokker, a Hollander.