Yesterday We Were in America: Alcock and Brown, First to Fly the Atlantic Non-Stop

By Brendan Lynch, Len Deighton and Group Captain A.J.H Alcock MBE RAF

On 14 June 1919 – eight years before Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic – two men from Manchester took off in an open-cockpit Vickers Vimy and flew into the history books. They battled through a sixteen-hour journey of snow, ice and continuous cloud, with a non-functioning wireless and a damaged exhaust that made it impossible to hear each other. And then, just five hours away from Ireland and high above the sea, the Vimy stalled. Yesterday We Were in America is the incredible story of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, and how they gave hope to a post-war world that was in grave need of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780750991094

Brendan Lynch

A former racing cyclist and driver, Brendan Lynch has had a keen interest in aviation since he first heard the story of Alcock and Brown’s exploits around a childhood fireside. He started research on this book after meeting Steve Fossett and witnessing the American’s 2005 re-enactment of the flight in a replica Vimy. Brendan cannot fly but he once looped the loop in a Formula Ford race at Lydden circuit. Living equally dangerously on the ground, he was a pacifist disciple of Bertrand Russell and was imprisoned for Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activities. Yesterday We Were in America is his eighth book. His first, Green Dust, won the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Pierre Dreyfus Award.