The three-month flight along the Nile

[mitty14u2]

The mechanic on the left, working on this S.80 in Cairo in 1914, is thought to be Gus Smith

When an early British sea plane, the S.80, made a three-month expedition south down the Nile in 1914, the mechanic was unnamed in the newspaper reports. But the adventure's success depended on his expertise.

It started with a tweet.

Diplomacy and Twitter might seem like chalk and cheese, but one of my more interesting follows is Tom Fletcher, Britain's ambassador to Lebanon.

Recently Tom tweeted that his great-grandfather Gus Smith had been the mechanic on the first flight along the River Nile, exactly one hundred years ago.

I wondered if he had any more detail. Thanks to family records supplied by Tom's father Mark, which have never before been made public, details of a remarkable adventure emerge.

In the early years of aviation, it was the pilots' skill which caught the public imagination.

The Wright brothers came first in 1903 - a few seconds aloft, at barely more than head height above the ground. Then Louis Bleriot successfully flew the English Channel.


When Frank McClean, a wealthy Irish aviator, steered a biplane he'd developed with the engineering firm Short Brothers between the towers of Tower Bridge in London, the Times newspaper noted: "The engine ran smoothly and the machine was always under complete control."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25578363

So many people live in the here and now, many people walked before us with just as many hopes and dreams, holding history as a time capsule open to be never forgotten, we need history like a light from the past to the present allowing those with wisdom to see the future pitfalls can be avoided.