Beschreibung:

POST MEDIEVAL ROLLS ROYCE ALCOCK & BROWN FLIGHT COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE Cast 1920 AD A large bronze commemorative cast plaque with four pins to the reverse, depicting two nude standing winged male figures each extending an arm towards the other above a heater-shaped panel with raised text "The first direct flight across the Atlantic was made on 14-15th June 1919, on a Vickers-Vimy Aeroplane, fitted with two Rolls-Royce engines of 560 HP each. Pilot Captain Sir John Alcock K.B.E., D.S.C. Navigator Lieutenant Sir A. Whitten Brown, K.B.E. This tablet is erected by Rolls Royce Limited in appreciation of the care and skill displayed by Mr. F. Henry Royce, the Engineer-in-Chief, and his assistants in the design of the engines and of the experimental staff and of all workers at Derby in connection with their construction."The reverse inscribed "SINGERS Bronze Founders Frome". The plaque sculpted on commission from Rolls-Royce by Sir William Reid Dick (1879-1961); the eagle-on-globe, which originally surmounted the plaque, now lost. 65.5 kg, 101cm (39 3/4"). Condition Fine condition. An important piece of aviation history and a work by a renowned sculptor. Provenance Property of a Hertfordshire country gentleman; rescued from a scrapyard in Bishop's Stortford, Essex; UK, in 2002. Literature Cf. The Times, London for 13 July 1920, p.17; and cf. Wardleworth, Dennis, William Reid Dick, Sculptor, Routledge, 2016, p.50; and see Dictionary of National Biography, biographical entries for Alcock, Brown and Dick. Footnotes John Alcock (1892-1919) and Arthur Brown (1886-1948) made aviation history by making the first non-stop flight, taking some sixteen hours flying time, across the Atlantic Ocean, only a few months after the end of the War. After flying from St Johns, Newfoundland, Canada to Clifden, Connemara, Ireland, taking some sixteen hours to complete, Winston Churchill then Secretary of State for Air, presented them with the Daily Mail prize (first offered in 1913) having achieved the flight in less than than the seventy-two hours stipulated; shortly afterwards they were invested with the KBE by George V at Windsor Castle; both men had been aviators during World War I and both had been prisoners of war; Alcock held after engine failure over Turkey and Brown being shot down over Germany. Alcock died in an airplane crash at Rouen, France while test flying a new Vickers Viking plane on 18 December 1919 and Brown died naturally on 4 October 1948; the Vickers Vimy airplane they made their pioneering flight in is preserved today in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London; several monuments to their achievement are still existing today: three in Newfoundland, one at the landing spot in Ireland, with others at Heathrow Airport, London and Manchester Airport (a few miles from the birthplace of Alcock); a Royal Mail postage stamp was issued in 1969 to mark the 50th anniversary of the flight; Rolls-Royce, whose Eagle engines were installed in the aircraft, paid their own tribute and commissioned this plaque from the late sculptor Sir William Reid Dick RA, RSBS (1879-1961, knighted 1935 and appointed King's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland by George VI in 1938) in 1920, believed originally sited at one of the Rolls-Royce factories; possibly at Derby. The sculptor made or contributed to many important works sited around the world in stone and bronze and these included, in London, the Kitchener Memorial in St Paul's Cathedral, the Air Force Memorial at Westminster, the statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt at Grosvenor Square, the Statue of George V at Westminster and, elsewhere, the figure of Lady Godiva at Coventry, the Arras Memorial and other War Memorials and the statue of David Livingston at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.