History of aviation – November 18, 1932. Only four days, six hours and fifty-three minutes, that’s the time it took Amy Johnson-Mollison to carry out an air raid between the cities of London and Cape Town. A record speed for this 10,046 kilometer connection carried out on this Friday, November 18, 1932 by the British aviator. Amy Johnson-Mollison thus managed to do better than Jim Mollison, her husband. The latter, on this route, had needed four days, seventeen hours and twenty-two minutes, or ten hours and twenty-nine minutes more!
It was on November 14, 1932 that the aviator embarked on this ambitious challenge, taking off from Lympne aerodrome in Great Britain to reach Cape Town, where she would land at 1:30 p.m. on November 18 1932, in front of no less than 4,000 people, completing a flight which was not an easy task.
Indeed, the pilot encountered problems with her silver Havilland DH.80A Puss Moth aircraft called “Desert Cloud”, more precisely with the oil filter and the engine which had a power of 105 horsepower.
