Date:	Saturday 5 September 1936
Time:	day
Type:	Percival P.10 Vega Gull
Owner/operator:	Miss Beryl Markham
Registration:	VP-KCC
MSN:	K.34
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 1
Aircraft damage:	Substantial
Location:	Baleine Cove, Breton Island -   Canada
Phase:	En route
Nature:	Private
Departure airport:	Abingdon Aerodome, UK
Destination airport:	Floyd Bennet Field in New York City
Confidence Rating:	Information is only available from news, social media or unofficial sources

Narrative:
4–5 September 1936: At 6:50 p.m., British Summer Time, Beryl Markham departed RAF Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England, aboard a turquoise blue-and-silver Percival P.10 Vega Gull, registration VP-KCC. Her intended destination was New York City, across the Atlantic Ocean in America.

The airplane flown by Mrs. Markham, serial number K.34, was brand-new, built for John Evans Carberry (formerly, 10th Baron Carbery) for his entry in The Schlesinger air race from London, England to Johannesburg, South Africa. He loaned the airplane to her for the transatlantic flight on condition that she would return it to England by mid-September, in time for the start of the race.

Beryl Markham was the first woman to successfully fly across the Atlantic from east to west. She is often incorrectly described as "the first person" to fly the Atlantic east to west in a solo non-stop flight, but that record belongs to Scottish pilot Jim Mollison.

When Markham decided to take on the Atlantic crossing, no pilot had yet flown non-stop from Europe to New York, and no woman had made the westward flight solo, though several had died trying. Markham hoped to claim both records. On 4 September 1936, she took off from Abingdon, England. After a 20-hour flight, her Vega Gull, The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation due to icing of the fuel tank vents, and she crash-landed at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada (her flight was, in all likelihood, almost identical in length to Mollison's). In spite of falling short of her goal, Markham had become the first woman to cross the Atlantic east-to-west solo, and the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop from east to west. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer

Beryl Markham and VP-KCC "The Messenger" returned to England aboard the passenger liner RMS Queen Mary. Although the damage was repaired, it was not in time to compete in The Schlesinger Air Race. John Carberry sold VP-KCC to Dar-es-Salaam Airways. It was written off in Tanganyika in August 1937, and de-registered in March 1938.

1. http://www.capebretonpost.com/news/local/2013/12/6/markham-s-remarkable-landing-in-baleine-3533971.html
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Markham#Record_flight
3. Lovell, Mary S. Straight on Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham New York: St Martins Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-01096-6
4. Markham, Beryl. West with the Night. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1492 [Reprinted 1983]. ISBN 0-86547-118-5.
5. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/6669533/Beryl-Markham-Britains-Amelia-Earhart.html
6. https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/vp-kcc/
7. http://www.airhistory.org.uk/gy/reg_VP-K.html

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
05-Sep-2017 07:49	gerard57	Added
05-Sep-2017 07:50	harro	Updated [Aircraft type]
27-Jan-2018 01:00	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Time, Cn, Operator, Source, Narrative]