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All Ireland Galway Landing Site of the First Transatlantic Flight

Landing Site of the First Transatlantic Flight

A strange egg in a mucky bog of western Ireland marks the spot of an aviation milestone.

Galway, Ireland

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Jennifer
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Landing site of the transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, and adjacent memorial cairn.   Smb1001
Marker for the Alcock and Brown landing, also the site of Marconi’s first trans-Atlantic transmissions.   jenpenguin (Atlas Obscura User)
1919, readying the Vickers Vimy airplane for the first trans-Atlantic flight.   Photographer unknown (collection of Library and Archives Canada)
Newspaper photo of the nose-dive into the bog.   Photographer unknown
The lonely cairn, and the bog Alcock and Brown landed in.   Map Data
Shaped like the tail of a plane, the Alcock and Brown memorial is north of the landing site.   Smb1001
The cairn sits on the spot of Marconi’s first transatlantic wireless station.   El Bubi
Little is left of the massive Marconi Station.   chernobaevlucy / Atlas Obscura User
Caption from an information board at the site   Elise Vale / Atlas Obscura User
Viewfinders with photos etched on them superimpose past images onto the modern day landscape.   chernobaevlucy / Atlas Obscura User
August 2023   DMStephenson / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Nearly a century ago, two young English aviators named William Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first nonstop transatlantic flight, and landed in a bog. They didn’t mean to end up there—they thought it looked like a nice, flat field. So rather than skittering down a smooth patch of green, their mistake meant the record-setting trip from Newfoundland to western Ireland came to a nose-down in a sea of peaty muck.

Today the site of this significant event is marked by some concrete ruins, a peculiar egg-shaped cairn, and a herd of sheep in a windswept, desolate place that belies the importance of this turning point in aviation history. Recently, greater efforts have been made to improve the accessibility on the site, with a three-mile circular walk around the several stopping points marked by information boards and viewfinders.

It wasn’t completely by chance that the two pioneers landed in this remote spot. Only 1,600 feet (500 meters) away is the ruined remains of another transatlantic first: the Marconi radio station that sent the first messages from Europe to North America. This was no little amateur operation: At its height, about 400 people worked at the station at any one time, and the site comprised a  huge condenser house building, a power house with  6 boilers, and the massive aerial system consisting of 8 wooden masts, each 210 feet high extending eastwards over the hill for a distance of 0.5 kilometres. 

The level of bravery involved in flying a flimsy, open-cockpit, bi-plane across the Atlantic is hard to comprehend in this age of quotidian air travel, and the achievement of transatlantic telegraphy seems trivial when compared to our ubiquitous mobile phone connections. But groundbreaking events like Alcock and Brown’s crossing should not be so easily forgotten or neglected. It may be just an odd egg in a muddy bog, but it represents a major milestone.

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Aviation Airplanes History Crash Site Radio Transportation Monuments

Know Before You Go

The landing site is at the end of Marconi Street, a 3 & 1/2 (5.8 km) mile drive south of Clifden in County Galway, The road is narrow and rutted, but surrounded by the stark beauty of western Ireland. A mile and a half to the north (2.8 km) on an unnamed road is the Alcock and Brown memorial.

Community Contributors

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JenPenguin

Edited By

chernobaevlucy, Elise Vale, DMStephenson

  • chernobaevlucy
  • Elise Vale
  • DMStephenson

Published

May 22, 2017

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  • http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/2/19/1365237/-Alcock-and-Brown-The-First-Transatlantic-Flight
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown
  • http://www.loveconnemara.com/see-and-do/alcock-and-brown-monument-p675601
  • http://www.connemara.net/alcock-and-brown/
Landing Site of the First Transatlantic Flight
Marconi Street
Galway
Ireland
53.446392, -10.022872
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