Tonight the winners of the Daily Mail Transatlantic Air Race will collect over £60,000 in prize-money. Are there any other rewards? Will the race make people more air-minded? Will it sell more British aircraft in the United States? Will it prove to be the aviation event of the year?
The race was for the fastest or most enterprising crossing of the Atlantic by air between the top of the G.P.O. Tower in London and the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. More than 300 people tried to win it in every kind of plane from supersonic jets and V.C.lOs to a Tiger Moth. It lasted a week and ended in New York in the early hours of yesterday morning. This is the story of the race as it happened. An eye-witness account by BBC correspondents and cameramen on both sides of the Atlantic and in flight above it.