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That the NC-1 and the NC-3 reached the Azores, but did not make safe landings in the harbor after their long flight, is one of the fortunes of flying which must not reflect upon the American effort as a whole. The French route which Lieutenant Fontan, of the French army, tried twice, and on which he was twice forced to land because of engine trouble, was laid to take advantage of favoring winds.
Some alarm was felt during the night by the failure of destroyers to find her. She appeared the next morning off the Chatham breakwater, "taxi-ing" under her own power. While her sister ships, the NC-1 and the NC-3, were flying to Trepassey the NC-4 waited at Chatham.
Towers with the NC-3 tossed about for nearly sixty hours at sea and was not picked up until the following Monday, when the public had begun to fear for his safety. On Tuesday, May 20th, the NC-4 hopped off for the shortest leg of the flight, 150 miles from Horta to Ponta Delgada, where the fuel and supplies for the machines were.
Both the other planes were forced to land at sea, the NC-3 after 1,250 miles of flight the longest ever made over water up to that time and the NC-1 after more than 1,100 miles in the air. The NC-1 with Bellinger and his crew was picked up on the morning of Saturday, May 17th, by a Greek steamer, the Ionia, and brought into Horta.
Just as she flew into Trepassey Bay, on May 14th, the NC-1 and NC-3 were preparing to take-off. They postponed their start until the next day. In the mean while repairs were rushed and adjustments made, and she was ready to start the next afternoon, when all three planes started a little after six o'clock.
The NC-1, and NC-3, and the NC-4 all proved to be up to expectations, and, with increased engine power, showed that they could take-off the water with a load of twenty-eight thousand five hundred pounds. After the necessary tests had been made on Jamaica Bay, Commander Towers said on May 4th that the start would be made a little after daybreak, May 6th.
The machines made their start from Rockaway on the morning of May 8th, at ten o'clock, and two of them, the NC-1, with Lieutenant-Commander Bellinger, and the NC-3, with Commander Towers, arrived at Halifax after nine hours' flying. The NC-4 proved to be the "lame duck" on the first leg of the flight, and came down at sea a hundred miles off Chatham, because of overheated bearings.
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