Beryl Markham
Beryl Markham (born 26 October 1902 in Leicester, Leicestershire; † August 3, 1986 in Nairobi, Kenya; born Beryl Clutterbuck ) was a British aviation pioneer. As the first man she flew over from England in the Atlantic non-stop solo flight in an east-west direction. The first non-stop solo flight in an east-west direction at all led by Jim Mollison in 1932, which started from Ireland.
Life
Beryl Markham was born in England. Her parents were the horse-breeder Charles Baldwin Clutterbuck and his wife Clara Agnes (nee Alexander). The family moved to what was then British East Africa, when she was four and she grew up in Njoro, Kenya. When she was 17 years old, her father had to sell his farm and his horses, Beryl hired himself with other studs as a trainer of thoroughbreds. The trained her horses ran in Nairobi good race and it worked out soon have a good reputation. At 18, she married Jock Purves. In 1927 she married the Englishman Mansfield Markham. The couple moved to England, where Beryl in 1929 gave birth to a son. The marriage failed, however, soon and Beryl Markham gave her child to his grandparents in nursing and returned to Kenya.
In Nairobi, she was a good friend of Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton, who took them in his plane. Inspired by the flying took Beryl Markham himself flying hours and put in a few months as the first woman in East Africa from the examination for a commercial pilot. From the Wilson Airport in Nairobi, she worked as a bush pilot, guided safaris, flew rich farmer, for the Postal Service, for ambulance services and as a scout for big game hunters. Whether she had an affair with Bror Blixen - Finecke is unclear.
Solo from Nairobi to London
Barely a year after their flight test she flew solo from Nairobi to England. Due to technical problems the flight lasted 23 days. My plane was a single-engine with 12 hp, without radio equipment and without navigation equipment other than a compass. The machine possessed not even a speedometer. From Nairobi it flew towards Juba in Sudan, but was forced to land because of a sandstorm and engine problems shortly before her destination. The next day she flew to Malakal on the Nile and wanted to achieve the next day Khartoum. Three times she had to make an emergency landing due to engine work. In Khartoum, it turned out that a cylinder head gasket was damaged. Because they required spare parts could not muster in Khartoum, she flew to Atbara, where they could eventually replace the cylinder and the seal. In the near Cairo she had again technical problems because of another sandstorm. This time they had the engine repair and check with the British Royal Air Force before she flew to Europe across the Mediterranean. Despite the bad weather, they reached London without further technical problems.
Transatlantic Flight East-West direction
Mid-30s prices for special aeronautical services were advertised again and again. After working for years as a bush pilot, Markham returned to England. After the success of Lindbergh and Earhart was discussed in Europe and the U.S. about the possibility of a direct airline between London and New York and suspended for the pilot who flew nonstop this way as the first, a high prize money. The difficulty of this flight was that the pilot had to fly against strong wind currents. In front of her had managed Jim Mollison of Ireland from the Atlantic crossing to Canada in August 1932, the second was John Grierso, the London- New York flew in six weeks in 1934 with stopovers.
In a borrowed Percival Vega Gull with a 200 horsepower engine, equipped with extra tanks and navigation instruments (but no radio equipment) Markham was launched on September 4, 1936 by 20 clock in the evening in London. By 22 clock 30 You flew over Ireland. The next day, by 14 clock she was spotted by a ship on the Atlantic and by 16 clock 30 You watched someone over Newfoundland before they " disappeared ". Your call from the fishing village of Baleine in Nova Scotia caused great relief and jubilation: Beryl Markham had made a crash landing their aircraft stuck nose first into a peat bog. Already over the Atlantic Markham had problems with a fuel tank because the fuel line was frozen and the motor therefore failed. Just before they hit the water, she brought him back up and running, and flew on. The same thing happened in Nova Scotia, and eventually led to the crash.
Beryl Markham was disappointed because she thought that the flight would counted as a failure because of the crash. So she was surprised when she was picked up by a machine of the U.S. Coast Guard and brought to New York, where she was received as a hero.
After the hype they retired to Leicester. She thought about it several times to take part in one of the great air race. However, when a friend of hers, Campbell Black, during a crash was killed, she was disgusted with the record flying.
1939 Beryl Markham moved to California, where she had an avocado ranch with her second husband. In 1942 she published - already divorced - her book westward with the night ( in the original West with the Night ), which became a bestseller. The book describes her childhood, her career as a bush pilot and their flight across the Atlantic.
1952 Markham returned from California to Kenya and back again managed to successfully establish itself as a trainer of racehorses. As westward was reissued early 80s with the night, she was again famous for a short time.
1986 turned George Gutekunst a documentary titled World without Walls, and in 1988 her life under the title Beryl Markham was: A Shadow on the Sun filmed as a TV movie. She died of pneumonia in 1986.