On June 14, 1919, a Vickers Vimy biplane lumbered into the air from a field in St John's, Newfoundland. More than sixteen hours and 3,000 kilometres later, the British crew of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown brought the aircraft down to a crash landing in a bog near Clifden, Ireland. The race to fly across the Atlantic Ocean had been won.

It is hard for us today to fully appreciate the celebrity status accorded Alcock and Brown their contemporaries in the world of aviation. Aircraft were flimsy, unreliable novelties and the men and women who flew them possessed incredible courage, daring and vision. Many of them have been forgotten, but others have become legends: Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post and Richard Byrd.

This book tell the stories of aviators who challenged the Atlantic Ocean between 1919 and the end of the Second World War. It tells how these pioneers lived and, all too often, died in their quest for glory.