This series in four episodes of the magazine “1:15 p.m. on Sunday” (Twitter, #1:15 p.m.), signed Marie-Pierre Farkas, Clément Voyer, Anthony Santoro and Christophe de Martino, returns to one of the greatest mysteries in the history of aviation: the disappearance of the White Bird, the biplane of wood, canvas and metal in which the two French aviators Charles Nungesser and François Coli wanted to connect without stopover Paris to New York in less than forty hours…
On May 8, 1927, the two aces of the First World War took off from Le Bourget airport to attempt the first aerial crossing of the North Atlantic in the context of the 1920s: aeronautics felt their wings growing in a competition between French and American pilots. We will never see Nungesser and François Coli again. What have they become ? Did they crash into the Channel some time after takeoff? Were they struck down in the middle of the ocean? Did the plane crash somewhere on the American continent?
Off to America!
The White Bird takes off loaded with 4,000 liters of gasoline and everyone thinks that the hardest part is over… Planes accompany it to Etretat and then the airmen find themselves alone facing 3,000 kilometers of ocean to cross, without radio, in the open air and in difficult conditions.
The two flying aces are not men to give up in the face of adversity. Off to America! Their arrival is expected the next day and they must land on the water, at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, but nothing has happened as planned…
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