Bleriot: 100 Years since the First Island Flight
July 25th, 2009
Today is the centennial of Louis Bleriot’s making the first powered flight to the island of Great Britain, from France across the English Channel.
Balloons had made the trip before, but this first flight via airplane changed island geography. Ships were no longer the only means of reaching them, and isolation decreased rapidly as the speed of aircraft increased. And, in the First and Second World Wars, Great Britain and other islands were to discover that airplanes greatly diminished their status as fortresses.
It is not clear whether this was the first powered flight to any island; did aviators fly before this to the Isle of Wight, Long Island, or Manhattan, for instance?
(Image courtesy Smudge 9000, Flickr)