In Search of Old Shamokin, June 2020 edition
Just over 100 years ago, a Shamokin native played a vital role in a remarkable yet often overlooked achievement in the history of aviation—the first successful transatlantic flight. In an arduous three-week journey in May 1919, Holden Chester Richardson was one of a crew of naval aviators who pioneered the way across the Atlantic Ocean aboard three U.S. Navy seaplanes from New York to Great Britain.
Library of Congress
There is perhaps no chapter of aviation history more misunderstood than that of the first transatlantic flight. Traditionally, the distinction is attributed to Lindbergh, who completed the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. It could just as easily be accorded to the two British aviators Alcock and Brown for having made a similar nonstop journey from June 14-15, 1919. But both were preceded in crossing the Atlantic by the trio of seaplanes known as the NC, or Navy-Curtiss, flying boats. Because the flight was neither continuous nor solo, it was quickly overshadowed by the later record breakers, leaving the story of the NCs to an undeserved obscurity.
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