Two of the large, single-engine biplanes were lost (without crew injury) as they hopped along a 30,000-mile route north to Alaska, south and west along the coastline of Asia to India, across Turkey, Europe, and the United States to San Francisco, then up the coast to Seattle.
When they touched down at Sand Point at 1:37 p.m., a cheering crowd of 40,000 greeted the two original planes, plus a third plane that had joined the flight in Nova Scotia.
The historic flight helped to boost King County efforts to convince Congress to acquire and develop Sand Point as a Naval Air Station. King County purchased most of the future base in 1921 and attempted to donate it to the Navy, but an isolationist Congress balked until 1926. The following year, Congress appropriated more than $1 million to develop the Sand Point Naval Air Station.
