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Bleriot and his plane at Dover.
The first person to fly the English Channel
in an aeroplane was a Frenchman called Louis Bleriot. The
flight took place on 25 July 1909 and won Bleriot a prize
of £1,000 from the Daily Mail. An earlier attempt five days
earlier, by Englishman Herbert Latham, had ended when he had
ditched in the sea.
Bleriot, a motorcar headlamp manufacturer,
had injured his foot and walked to his plane with the aid
of crutches. He took off at 4.37am and, guided by smoke from
a French destroyer, he spotted St Margaret’s Bay. Turning
towards Dover he was caught by the wind and made a crash landing
in Northfall Meadow, behind the Castle,
breaking the undercarriage and propeller. The whole journey
had taken 20 minutes.
A memorial in the form of a stone silhouette
of Bleriot’s plane is set into the ground at the place where
he landed.
The Bleriot Memorial.
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