Classic Lecture Series: Atlantic Flying – pioneering the route by flying-boat by J. C. Kelly-Rogers

Summary: Captain of one of the first transatlantic flying-boats, J. C. Kelly-Rogers takes his audience through the challenges and romance of setting up and flying the transatlantic passenger route. Starting with the agreements between the UK, Canada, Ireland and the USA to set up schemes in the late 1930s, he gives insights on how he and others helped Imperial Airways and then BOAC to overcome the challenges of establishing the first scheduled service, including surveying the route and establishing the best methods to carry-out flight-refuelling, before talking of his experiences of operating the service during the Second World War. The lecture was originally entitled “Atlantic Flying Twenty-Five Years Ago” and was the 5th Short Brothers Memorial Lecture to the presented to the Belfast Branch of the Royal Aeronautical on 1 December 1964. The podcast was edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS and it was digitised thanks to a grant from the Royal Aeronautical Society Foundation.