About
Robert O. Harder was a USAF Strategic Air Command “Cold War” B-52D aircrewman with 145 combat missions during the Vietnam War. A rated Navigator and Radar Bombardier, he flew nuclear training sorties and stood Pad Alert, ready on a moment’s notice to launch against the Soviets. He later became a commercial pilot and certificated flight instructor. Following a long business career, he is now a free-lance writer living in Chicago.
Featured Work
"First Crossing: The 1919 Trans-Atlantic Flight of Alcock & Brown
Probably 100 out of 100 lay persons and 98 out of 100 aviators believe the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic was made by Charles Lindbergh’s New York to Paris flight in 1927. In fact, the deed was accomplished eight years earlier by two former Royal Air Force officers, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, when they flew their flimsy wood and fabric Vickers Vimy from St. Johns, Newfoundland to Cliveden, Ireland on June 14-15, 1919. Their largely forgotten story unfolds on two levels—an adventure tale that beggars belief it actually succeeded, blended with a lay history of early technological breakthroughs that brought about the modern aviation age.
We follow the two men from their separate upbringings in Manchester, England through terrifying aerial combat during the Great War. Both would be shot down and become prisoners of war. Brown was horribly injured; after two years imprisonment he was exchanged in 1917 for a similarly injured German flyer. While incarcerated, both had independently dreamed and schemed of a way to win Lord Northcliffe’s £10,000 prize for the first non-stop trans-Atlantic crossing. At war’s end, in an incredible moment of serendipity, they chanced to meet for the first time at Vickers Aviation near London. They discovered their mutual interest in the race and that Alcock needed an over-ocean navigator while Brown needed a pilot—what proved to be an ideal marriage. After shipping their specially modified two-engine Vimy bomber to Newfoundland they joined the three remaining prize competitors—all four finalists were British. Through a combination of luck and their competitor’s bad fortune, Alcock and Brown launched themselves into aviation immortality.