| John Alcock (aviator) |
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Alcock was born in 1892 at Seymour, Old Trafford , England . He first became interested in flying at the age of seventeen. He became an experienced pilot during World War I , though he was shot down during a bombing raid, and taken prisoner in Turkey . After the war, Alcock wanted to continue his flying career and took up the challenge of attempting to be the first to fly directly across the Atlantic. A few days after the flight both Alcock and Brown were knighted by King George V . Alcock was present at the Science Museum in London on 15 December 1919 when the recovered Vimy was presented to the nation. Three days later he was flying a new Vickers amphibious plane, the Type 54 Viking , to the first postwar aeronautical exhibition in Paris when he crashed in fog at Cote d'Everard, near Rouen , Normandy stalling such that a wing hit a tree. He died before medical assistance arrived. Sir Ross Smith and J.M.Bennett also died in a stalled Viking amphibian, spinning into a woodland near Brooklands on 13 April 1922 . SEE ALSO |