The Big Hop

The First Nonstop Flight Across the Atlantic Ocean and into the Future

The inspiring story of a pathbreaking 1919 flight and the courageous fliers who risked their lives to make aviation history.

In 1919, in Newfoundland, four teams of aviators came from Britain to compete in "the Big Hop": an audacious race to be the first to fly, nonstop, across the Atlantic Ocean. One pair of competitors was forced to abandon the journey halfway, and two pairs never made it into the air. Only one team, after a death-defying sixteen-hour flight, made it to Ireland.

Celebrated on both continents, the transatlantic contest offered a surge of inspiration―and a welcome distraction―to a public reeling from the Great War and the influenza pandemic. But the seven airmen who made the attempt were quickly forgotten, their achievement overshadowed by the solo Atlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart years later. In The Big Hop, David Rooney grants the pioneering aviators of 1919 the spotlight they deserve. From Harry Hawker, the pilot who as a young man had watched Houdini fly over his native Australia, to the engineer Ted Brown, a US citizen who joined the Royal Flying Corps, Rooney traces the lives of the unassuming men who performed extraordinary acts in the sky.

©2025 David Rooney (P)2025 Penguin Audio

The fantastic stories and excellent performance.

Excellent story and a delightful listen, worth close attention to fully appreciate the men and women who whole heartedly supported and assisted each other, and often demonstrated the true spirt of adventure and good will even when competitors after the prize.

The determination exhibited by all the fliers

Liked the narrator and the comparison of the flyers stories and the historical setting. The toughness of each flying team