My answer was the Vickers Vimy,  but that was not correct.

 Many people, when asked who was the first to fly non- stop across the Atlantic, will say Charles Lindberg, but that is not correct. He was the FIRST to fly SOLO across the Atlantic in 1927.

 The first non- stop was in 1919, when a Vickers Vimy, piloted by Captain’s Allcock and Brown was flown from Newfoundland to Ireland.  That original aircraft is in the Aviation Gallery at the Science Museum in Kensington, London.

I was able to contact the Curator of the museum and he let me go into the aircraft gallery before it was opened to the public so that I could take as many photos as I wanted.  I also made notes about the rigging and other parts.

There is another example at the RAF museum in Hendon that was built along time ago by RAF apprentices, and I had some photos of that one.

 Another Vimy was also flown by Ross and Keith Smith, with two mechanics from England to Australia in 1919,. They became the first to fly from England to Australia.

The registration No. of that Vimy was G E A O U which was sometimes referred to as meaning “ God ‘Elp All Of Us.”

After getting all that info I was then able to contact one of the members of the Replica builder team by e-mail.  He told me that he didn’t know how a model of the VIMY might fly, but that the full size was, in his words, “a pig to fly, you couldn’t take your hands or feet from the controls for a second or it would go all over the place”

 And so, in spite of all of that time and effort I decided to pass on building the model.

While I was working in Oman, I met the National Geographic photographer (James Stanfield) who was covering this recreation flight.

https://next-horizon.org/expeditions/vickers-vimy-recreation /

 Just watched the first video-  An amazing journey. The Transatlantic Vimy was a little different , it did not have the front skid, but had more fuel tanks.

 I read a book about the flight, and in that, at one stage, they encountered severe weather and minimal visibility which resulted in the aircraft being upside down less that 500 feet from the water. That aircraft is inherently unstable.

How they ever got out of that defies imagination, but they did.

The flight is often criticized for turning on it's nose when landing , but the facts are that they looked for a safe place to land and saw a large green field in Ireland, so they landed there.

Unfortunately, what they could not have known from above, was that it was not a field as we know it, but a BOG and the wheels sank in, and  they tipped over.

 I will see if I still have that book.

That whole period is an amazing part of the development of the aeroplane and its subsequent use to connect the far reaches of the British Empire as it was then.

 They didn't sing " Rule Britannia"  for nothing. It was literally an Empire on which the Sun always shone on some part of it.

 Downhill ever since.