May 14, 2026 - This Week in Aviation History through the Windows of Flight

The third week of May spans nine remarkable years in aviation history — and every one of them involves the Atlantic Ocean, a desperate gamble, and someone refusing to quit. We start on May 15th, 1918, when the United States Post Office launched its first regular airmail service with a presidential send-off, a crowd of dignitaries — and a pilot who flew twenty miles in the wrong direction. Lieutenant George Boyle's legendary wrong-way departure is one of aviation's great comedy-of-errors moments, and the story of how the mail eventually got through anyway is worth telling in full. Then we go to May 18th, 1919, and a modified Sopwith biplane lifting off from Newfoundland with Harry Hawker and Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve at the controls. Their attempt to cross the Atlantic ended in an ocean ditching alongside a Danish cargo ship with no radio — and for eight days, the world mourned them as dead. The story of how they came back is one of the least-known and most purely human moments in the whole history of transatlantic flight. And then — May 20th, 1927. Roosevelt Field, Long Island. A silver monoplane loaded with 450 gallons of fuel, no radio, no parachute, and a twenty-five-year-old airmail pilot from the Midwest that the press was calling "The Flying Fool." Thirty-three and a half hours later, Charles Lindbergh touched down at Le Bourget and a hundred thousand people broke through the barriers to reach him. Three stories. Nine years. The Atlantic, again and again, until someone finally got across. Windows of Flight is brought to you by the Border Series — aviation thriller novels by host Eric W. Ristau. Old bold pilots, vintage aircraft, and plots ripped straight from today's headlines. Find the Border Series wherever books are sold, and learn more at www.ericristau.com.