The history of aviation is built on two things in equal measure: the courage to attempt the impossible, and the determination to make the impossible ordinary. The second week of June gives us both — a flying washboard that convinced a nation to trust the airplane, and two men who crossed the North Atlantic in an open cockpit, nearly died several times, and landed nose-first in an Irish bog.

We start on June 11th, 1926, at Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan, where a blocky, corrugated, gloriously unglamorous aircraft lifted off for the first time. The Ford Trimotor — the Tin Goose — wasn't fast, wasn't quiet, and wasn't particularly comfortable. What it was, was trustworthy. Henry Ford put his name and his marketing machine behind it, and a generation of Americans who had never considered setting foot on an airplane gradually changed their minds. You can still ride in one at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh every summer. It's loud. It's slow. It's magnificent.

Then we go back seven years to June 14th, 1919, and a makeshift grass runway in St. John's, Newfoundland, where a Vickers Vimy loaded to its limits with fuel climbed into the sky and turned east. Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown were attempting the first nonstop transatlantic crossing in history. What followed was sixteen hours of fog, ice, a spiral dive to sixty feet above the waves, and a navigator who climbed out of the cockpit six times in the dark to clear ice from the engines by hand. The Irish bog they landed in was not the ending anyone planned. It was the only ending that mattered.

Two stories. Seven years apart. One about making aviation safe enough for ordinary people, and one about two men who were anything but ordinary doing something that had never been done.

Windows of Flight is brought to you by the Border Series — aviation thriller novels by host Eric Ristau. Old bold pilots, vintage aircraft, and plots ripped straight from today's headlines. Find the Border Series wherever books are sold, and learn more at www.ericristau.com.