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From the beginning of the flight from Trepassey the NC-4, thought to be the "lame duck" of the squadron, ran away from the other two machines. She lost contact with them very quickly and plowed through the night alone, laying her course by the line of destroyers lying beneath her. She was about half an hour ahead of the NC-1 at daybreak the next day and within an easy run of Horta, Fayal.
There remained only the task of filling their hulls with one thousand eight hundred gallons of gasolene. Early in the morning of May 5th, while mechanics were pumping gasolene into the tanks of the NC-1, a spark from an electric pump fell into a pool of gasolene and set fire to her whole right side. In a moment the heavily "doped" linen wings, with seasoned spruce spars, were a mass of hot flame.
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.
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.
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.
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 signing of the armistice interfered with her use as a submarine scout, and naval plans for crossing the ocean in the air were brought from their pigeonholes. The NC-1 and her sister ships under construction appeared to have been built for just such a flight.
John C. Porte, of the Royal Navy, came over from England to be pilot of the boat, and after her tests in August she was to have made her flight. But Porte was recalled by his government at the outbreak of war and the project given up. In the latter half of 1918 the naval seaplane NC-1 was delivered to the Rockaway Naval Air Station the largest seaplane ever built on this side of the water.
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.
The sailors at work on the machine, with complete disregard of their personal safety, ran for fire-extinguishers, and with the fire burning around the mouth of the open tanks, confined it to the right wings of the machine and to the elevators of the NC-4 standing close by. No one believed that the NC-1 could be made ready in time for the flight twenty-four hours away.
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