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White plaque № 50424

Photograph at the White plaque № 50424 white plaque

Mayo Avenue The street names at Dundee Airport commemorate the World Record for the longest uninterrupted flight by a seaplane. At noon on 6 October 1938 an Empire Flying boat called "Maia" took off from the River Tay carrying a smaller seaplane called "Mercury" on its back. This piggy-back method of launching long distance aircraft was called the "Mayo Composite" after Major Robert Mayo of Imperial Airways who devised the technique. The two planes separated over Dundee Law and Captain Donald C.T. Bennett (later to be founder of the Pathfinder bomber force) and his co-pilot Ian Harvey, proceeded to fly 6,045 miles in Mercury in 42 hours 26 minutes. The finishing point was the estuary of the Orange River at Alexander Bay in South Africa, as the aircraft had insufficient fuel to reach its intended destination of Capetown due to adverse weather on route.

Inscription drawn from imported open data, awaiting original TributeLegacy editorial.

Source: Open Plaques. Geographic data via OpenStreetMap.

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  • Open Plaques, dedicated to the public domain (CC0). See openplaques.org.
  • Wikidata, available under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.
  • Historic England, National Heritage List for England, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. War memorial records are drawn from open community datasets (OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, NHLE) — never from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is excluded.

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