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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser.

30 July 2009

I suppose it’s inevitable that there have been lots of comparisons made this week, between Louis Bleriot’s original record breaking flight across the Channel from Sangatte to Dover and last Saturday’s replica crossings to celebrate the centenary but one things for certain – there were far more people searching the skies in Dover on 25th July 2009 than in 1909.

I had the privilege of attending the official ceremony at the memorial site where the original crash landing took place and I was able to have a chat with Louis Bleriot’s grandson.

He told a wonderful story about the circumstances of the landing which I’d not heard before. He said that one of the first to greet the special arrival was a Customs Officer from the port but because this was the first time that a foreign aircraft had ever landed on British soil there was no laid-down procedure and no appropriate documentation. So after assuring himself that Louis didn’t have any half bottles of Cognac stashed away and wasn’t suffering from any infectious diseases he granted him ‘free pratique’ – in the manner of an inward bound ship. And because the aircraft didn’t have a registered name the documents were made out to the motor yacht “Mono Plane” under the command of Ship’s Master, Louis Bleriot.

The scene must have offered Bleriot some light relief after his epic flight. His 3 cylinder rotary engine was only capable of developing 25 horsepower, which is the size of motor that powers today’s sit-on lawn mowers so it’s just as well he didn’t have to battle against head winds. These engines were prone to overheat and stall but Bleriot’s safety was threatened in other ways. He made the trip without the aid of any real instrumentation – not even a basic compass and for part of the trip he had no idea where he was or where he was going.

In his own account of the flight Louis recalls that when visibility eventually improved he headed for the landing area and when he was about 50ft above the spot he cut his engine and crash landed damaging the undercarriage and smashing the propeller. I was allowed to hold one of the broken blades of that propeller at Saturday’s ceremony and it certainly brought home to me what a risky venture that first cross channel flight was.

No area of activity demonstrates man’s accelerating development and technological achievement better than his endeavours to overcome gravity and fly to the skies.

Just ten years after the Frenchman risked life and limb to fly twenty odd miles across the English Channel, two British aviators, Alcock and Brown, became the first to fly non-stop across nearly 2,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean. Just 50 years after that, in 1969 we were catapulting people over 200,000 miles to land on the moon and today, shuttle trips to the NASA Space Station have almost become routine – nearly as routine as crossing the Channel.