Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight

In some quarters Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic seems today somewhat more famous than the first non-stop crossing in 1919. The Vickers Vimy made a far more harrowing version of the trip first, albeit with two men aboard. The Vimy's wings span 68 feet -- of wood and fabric. With primitive instruments, unreliable mechanicals, and an open cockpit, Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown flew from Newfoundland to Ireland.

Originally a bomber designed to take a full ton of ordnance from London to Berlin by night, the Vimy left pilots skating across the air thanks to the enormous surface area of its wings. Alcock and Brown fought through heavy weather the entire way, at one point bottoming out of a dive less than 100' over the North Atlantic. They could scarcely see the stars through the cloud cover, and had only a compass to verify their bearings without celestial navigation. Their arrival earned them a prize of 10,000 pounds (roughly $500,000 today).