The first flight over Mount Everest was undertaken in April 1933 by two Westland aircraft. They were piloted by Douglas Douglas-Hamilton (then known as Lord Clydesdale) and David McIntyre, [1] with Stewart Blacker and Sidney Bonnett in the observer seats. The expedition was financed by Lucy, Lady Houston and led by Peregrine Fellowes. [2]
Prior to the First World War (1914–1918), aircraft were limited to altitudes below about 10,000 feet (3,000 m). Technical advances in military aviation during that war, such as the invention of turbocharged and supercharged aircraft engines, allowed aircraft to reach higher altitudes. In 1918, Alexander Kellas (a British mountaineering physiologist) suggested that aircraft would soon be able to fly over Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft), which would be useful for reconnaissance of potential climbing routes. [3] At that time, the mountain had never been climbed. In 1919, Jean Casale made the first flight to exceed the altitude of Everest, but only for a short period, and actually flying over the mountain would be far more challenging. The main limitation of high altitude flight at this time was keeping the crews alive in the low pressure and cold temperature air.
No progress on the idea was made during the 1920s, partly because the diplomatic Affair of the Dancing Lamas prevented any attempt to climb the mountain from 1925 to 1933. In the early 1930s, John Buchan (a member of parliament (MP) for Scottish Universities) became concerned that aviation firsts were being dominated by American aviators. [4] Buchan approached Lord Clydesdale (MP for East Renfrewshire) to suggest a flight over Everest that would promote British aviation. [4] Clydesdale was also the youngest squadron leader in the Royal Air Force (he commanded the reserve 602 Squadron, which was equipped with Westland Wapiti biplanes), and the son of Alfred Douglas-Hamilton, 13th Duke of Hamilton. [1] [5]
No attempt could be made without substantial funding, so in September 1932 Clydesdale visited Lucy, Lady Houston at Kinrara (her estate in Scotland) to ask her to fund the expedition. The highly nationalistic Lady Houston was excited by the idea that Clydesdale put forward, feeling that flying over Everest would strengthen British rule in India (Houston was an outspoken opponent of the Indian independence movement) and impressed that Clydesdale had worn his kilt for dinner. She agreed to fund the expedition and became involved in its planning. [6]
The inventor Stewart Blacker joined the expedition; he was an experienced pilot who had served in the British Indian Army from 1907 to 1932 (reaching the rank of major), so was familiar with the region. [3] Air commodore Peregrine Fellowes was brought in to lead the expedition and head its planning. [2] Fellowes and Blacker obtained the necessary permissions from the Air Ministry, India Office and the government of Nepal to allow the flight to occur. [3] [2] Nepal granted permission for only a single flight; while the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet refused permission for the aircraft to enter Tibetan airspace. [2]
Blacker also convinced the Royal Geographical Society that a flight would provide valuable information for the planned 1933 British Mount Everest expedition, which aimed to climb to the summit. [3] A flight might also search for evidence of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who had disappeared during an attempt to reach the summit during the 1924 expedition. If Mallory and Irvine had reached the summit before dying on the descent, they might have left some record or abandoned equipment at the summit. [4] The Royal Geographical Society agreed to support the expedition.
Clydesdale decided to use two biplane aircraft for the attempt: the first Westland PV-6 (a prototype of the Westland Wallace bomber), registered G-ACBR; and a modified Westland PV-3, registered G-ACAZ (referred to as the Houston-Westland [7] ). He selected David Fowler McIntyre, a flight lieutenant from 602 Squadron, to pilot the other aircraft. [1] Each pilot would be accompanied by an observer in the second seat of the aircraft: Blacker accompanied Clydesdale in the PV-3, and Sidney R. G. Bonnett, a cinematographer for Gaumont British News, accompanied McIntyre in the PV-6. [1]
Both aircraft were modified (by Blacker) [3] to enclose the observer positions, but retained open pilot's cockpits. Oxygen systems were installed, to keep the crew alive using oxygen masks. The crews wore multiple layers of sheepskin clothing and the aircraft were modified to provide connections for heated flying suits. [3] To save weight, there were no parachutes. [4] Special fuel was developed, that would not freeze at the low temperatures expected. [4] The supplies of fuel and oxygen were sufficient for only 15 minutes at high altitude. [8] [4] To obtain a photographic mosaic of the terrain, each aircraft was equipped with a fixed downwards-pointing video camera in the fuselage, while the observers carried still cameras. [2] Bonnett selected a Williamson Automatic Eagle III camera for the task. [8]
Both aircraft were shipped from Britain to Karachi by sea, arriving in February. [4] The crews then flew the aircraft to Purnea, in Bihar state, where they were based at Lalbalu Airfield, approximately 50 miles (80 km) south of Mount Everest. [9] The journey from England had taken 25 days. [2]
The flight would require clear weather over the mountain, which had to be reconnoitred using daily 5:30 am flights by a third aircraft, a Puss Moth flown by Fellowes. [4] [2] For nine days, conditions were adjudged to be unsuitable. [2] While they awaited clear weather, the expedition crews relaxed by swimming, until an encounter with a crocodile required McIntyre to shoot the animal. [4] On 3 April, Fellowes reported no clouds between the airfield and the summit. [4] Winds were below 40 miles per hour (60 km/h) but there was lots of dust in the atmosphere; Fellowes described conditions as "reasonably satisfactory". [2]
The expedition took off from Lulbalu on an open cabin[ clarification needed ] flight at 8:25 am on 3 April. [3] [10] [11] [12] After 9 am they reached their maximum altitude of 31,000 ft (9,400 m) as they passed over Lhotse, [2] the fourth-highest mountain in the world, located two miles south of Everest. Downward air currents induced by the mountains then caused both aircraft to lose about 1,500 feet (460 m). [10]
Bonnett briefly lost consciousness due to hypoxia after damaging his oxygen line; [3] he successfully repaired the leak with a handkerchief. [10] A strap holding McIntyre's oxygen mask broke, forcing him to hold it in place with one hand while flying the aircraft with the other. [4] At 10:05 am both planes passed approximately 100 feet (30 m) over the summit. [10] [2] McIntyre required three attempts to pass over the summit. [4] [2] Clydesdale looked for signs of Mallory & Irvine, but saw none [4] (Mallory's body would not be found until 1999; Irvine's is still missing). The aircraft then had to make a sharp turn to avoid entering Tibet. [2] Both aircraft returned to the airfield about 3 hours after they had departed.. [3] [10]
News of the successful flight was sent to London by telegram. The reply congratulated the team, but forbade them from repeating the feat, due to the dangerous problems experienced with the oxygen supply. [4] However, the quality of the photographs taken on the first flight was compromised by dust, so the crews determined to ignore the instructions from London and make a second flight. [3] [4] They successfully did so on 19 April, when weather conditions were clearer. This time they were able to obtain high quality photographs of the surface. [4]
The flight set milestones[ which? ] for developments in technology, aviation and photography. [3] The Guardian reported that "It is a splendid achievement - not for any material gains, any additions to aeronautical knowledge that it brings, for it brings few or none, but simply because it was one of the few last great spectacular flights in aviation which remained to be done." [7]
The aerial photographs were obtained too late to assist the 1933 British Mount Everest expedition, which had already reached Rongbuk Monastery – on the other side of the Himalayas from the airfield – and was ultimately unsuccessful. The photographs were made public in 1951 [3] and were used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to plan their route to the top of Mount Everest, which they successfully climbed in 1953. [8]
A half-hour documentary film about the flight, Wings Over Everest , won an Academy Award in 1936. It combined real footage from the expedition with staged shots of the participants (not actors). [13]
Fellowes, Blacker and de:Percy Thomas Etherton wrote a book, First Over Everest! The Houston-Mount Everest Expedition, 1933 which was published in 1934. Buchan wrote the foreword. [14]
Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
George Herbert Leigh-Mallory was an English mountaineer who participated in the first three British Mount Everest expeditions from the early to mid-1920s.
Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine was an English mountaineer who took part in the 1924 British Everest Expedition, the third British expedition to the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest.
The goal of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition of 1999 was to discover evidence of whether George Mallory and Andrew Irvine had been the first to summit Mount Everest in their attempt of 8–9 June 1924. The expedition was instigated by British climber Graham Hoyland. It was organised by regular Everest expedition leader Eric Simonson and advised by researcher Jochen Hemmleb, with a team of climbers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Hemmleb's investigations of reports of earlier sightings and photographs had led him to identify what he believed was the area in which Irvine's body lay, some distance below where his ice axe had been found by Percy Wyn-Harris on the expedition led by Hugh Ruttledge in 1933. The team hoped in particular to find a camera on Irvine's body which, had the pair been successful, should have contained a picture of the summit. After commencing the search on 1 May 1999, Conrad Anker mistakenly got off course and, surprisingly, found Mallory's body, not Irvine's.
Air Commodore Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton and 11th Duke of Brandon, was a Scottish nobleman and aviator who was the first man to fly over Mount Everest.
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at 8,849 metres (29,031.7 ft) above sea level. It is situated in the Himalayan range of Solukhumbu district, Nepal.
Conrad Anker is an American rock climber, mountaineer, and author. He was the team leader of The North Face climbing team for 26 years until 2018. In 1999, he located George Mallory's body on Everest as a member of a search team looking for the remains of the British climber. Anker had a heart attack in 2016 during an attempted ascent of Lunag Ri with David Lama. He was flown via helicopter to Kathmandu where he underwent emergent coronary angioplasty with a stent placed in his proximal left anterior descending artery. Afterwards he retired from high altitude mountaineering, but otherwise he continues his work. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.
The Westland Wallace was a British two-seat, general-purpose biplane of the Royal Air Force, developed by Westland as a follow-on to their successful Wapiti. As the last of the interwar general purpose biplanes, it was used by a number of frontline and Auxiliary Air Force Squadrons. Although the pace of aeronautical development caused its rapid replacement in frontline service, its useful life was extended into the Second World War with many being converted into target tugs and wireless trainers. In 1933 a Westland Wallace became the first aircraft to fly over Everest, as part of the Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition.
The Westland PV-3 was a British two-seat torpedo bomber of the 1930s built by Westland Aircraft Works. The aircraft was a private venture development and based on the Westland Wapiti. It never entered production. The aircraft is best known as one of the first two to fly over Everest as part of the Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition.
Normalair-Garrett Limited(NGL), or Normalair, was a British manufacturing company established in 1946 in Yeovil, Somerset, England, which manufactured high altitude life support equipment for the aerospace industry. Since 1999 it has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc, known as Honeywell Aerospace Yeovil (HAY).
Wings over Everest is a 1934 British short documentary film directed by Geoffrey Barkas and Ivor Montagu. It won an Academy Award in 1936 for Best Short Subject (Novelty). It described the 1933 Houston-Mount Everest flight expedition, in which Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton, otherwise known as Lord Clydesdale, piloted a single-engined biplane on 3 April 1933, just clearing Everest's southern peak by a few feet, having been caught in a powerful downdraught. The film used mixture of real footage of Everest from the record-breaking flight and theatrically produced scenes using the actual people rather than actors.
Fredrik Sträng is a Swedish mountaineer, adventurer and documentary film maker.
The 1924 British Mount Everest expedition was—after the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition—the 2nd expedition with the goal of achieving the first ascent of Mount Everest. After two summit attempts in which Edward Norton set a world altitude record of 8,572.8 metres (28,126 ft), the mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine disappeared on the third attempt. Their disappearance has given rise to the long-standing speculation of whether or not the pair might – under a narrow set of assumptions – have reached the summit. Mallory's body was found in 1999 at 8,156 metres (26,760 ft), but the resulting clues did not provide any conclusive evidence as to whether the summit was reached.
The 1922 British Mount Everest expedition was the first mountaineering expedition with the express aim of making the first ascent of Mount Everest. This was also the first expedition that attempted to climb Everest using bottled oxygen. The expedition attempted to climb Everest from the northern side out of Tibet. At the time, Everest could not be attempted from the south out of Nepal as the country was closed to Western foreigners.
Lieutenant-Colonel Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker OBE was a British Army officer and inventor of weapons; he invented the Blacker Bombard, from which was developed the Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot-mortar – and laid the basis of the PIAT anti-tank weapon.
The 1952 Swiss Mount Everest expedition was an attempt to summit Mount Everest. Led by, Edouard Wyss-Dunant, the expedition, which included Tenzing Norgay, reached a height of 8,595 metres (28,199 ft) on the southeast ridge, setting a new climbing altitude record and opening up a new route to Mount Everest and paving the way for further successes by other expeditions. Norgay successfully summited the mountain the following year with Sir Edmund Hillary, the first successful expedition.
Major General John Geoffrey Bruce was an officer in the British Indian Army, eventually becoming Deputy Chief of General Staff, who participated in the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition. Bruce, who had never before climbed a mountain, had been appointed as a transport officer, but chance led to him accompanying George Finch on the only summit attempt that used supplemental oxygen. Together they set a new mountaineering world record height of 27,300 ft (8,321 m), only 1,731.7 ft (527.82 m) below the summit of Mount Everest.
Precipitated by unexpected permission from Tibet, the 1935 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition was planned at short notice as a preliminary to an attempt on the summit of Mount Everest in 1936. After exceptionally rancorous arguments involving the Mount Everest Committee in London, Eric Shipton was appointed leader following his successful trekking style of expedition to the Nanda Devi region in India in 1934.
The 1936 British Mount Everest expedition was a complete failure, and raised questions concerning the planning of such expeditions. This was Hugh Ruttledge's second expedition as leader. Heavy snows and an early monsoon forced their retreat on several occasions, and on the final attempt two climbers narrowly survived an avalanche. This was the first expedition in which climbers were able to carry portable radios.