A little history....

A Little History....
I happened upon these great pictures while surfing the web and thought it might be fun to share them. On April 12 1928, a German Junkers W33 tried to fly the first non stopeast-west crossing against headwinds. The airplane, which was purported called The Bremen, flew through thick fog and went off-course quite a bit to the north. The disoriented crew finally spotted a beacon and landed on a small island,Greenly Island, only 10 kilometers from Blanc-Sablon on the North Shore. Thewheels sank on landing, damaging the landing gear and the propeller. The guardian of the beacon transmitted a message immediately that the crew ofthe Bremen was safe, to the relief of everybody. Journalists standing guard in Boston and New York rushed to the train station in La Malbaie, trying tobe the first with the scoop. They all wanted to find an airplane that will fly them to Greenly Island. Canadian Transcontinental Airways' s Fairchild would be the first to arrive to the crash site. In fact, to prevent competitors from being there first, Transcontinental bought all the fuel along the coast! Only four journalists will be allowed to fly onboard the airplane flown by Romeo Vachon, and at that , for the princely sum of $ 2500 each! This did not please everybody...A few days later, a Ford Trimotor arrived from Detroit with spare parts forthe Bremen. It was flown by the notorious Floyd Bennett, who was RichardByrd's copilot on the historic north pole overflight two years previously. Unfortunately, Bennett caught pneumonia and was transported urgently to the Jeffrey-Hale hospital in Quebec where his condition quickly worsened. Byrd himself, comes to his rescue along with the famous and very well known Charles Lindbergh who lands his airplane on the Plaines of Abraham in the evening of April 24 1928, bringing precious serum from the RockfellerFoundation of New York. Nevertheless, Bennett dies a few hours later. A military service is granted him and an imposing procession crossed the city of Quebec. In spite of the spare parts brought to the Bremen, it remained unable to fly out and had to be dismantled and transported by ship to NewYork. Above is a photo of journalists in Sept-Iles Quebec (my hometown) scurrying for a shot of the rescue planes heading to Blanc Sablon. The pictures underneath are of Sept-Iles port, the building of some major structure in Clark City and Arnaud street circa 1952.