It is a common lament among Portuguese people living in Asia why there aren't more direct flights to Portugal. Currently one can fly direct from Hangzhou, China, to Lisbon four days a week, while Korean Air will be adding three weekly flights from Seoul Incheon on a seasonal basis in September 2024. And why not from Macau, given the historical ties?
What is little known is the fact that 2024 marks the centenary of the Lisbon-Macau Raid, when aviators José Manuel Sarmento de Beires and António Jacinto da Silva de Brito Pais flew from one end of the Eurasian continent to the other. The historic journey took two months and 14 days, covering a distance of 16,760km with a flying time of 117 hours and 41 minutes (just under five continuous days). All this with an open cockpit!
The Wright brothers made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight in North Carolina, USA, in December 1903, kicking off a new era. Early innovators included the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont, and the first generation of fighter planes was deployed by the French, British, German and Italian during World War I. After the war, aviation technology continued to advance rapidly, and the 1920s became the golden age of long-distance "firsts".
As an echo of Portugal's history as a maritime pioneer, being the first Europeans to sail all the way to India, China and Japan, Portuguese aviators also played a role in this giddy period of aviation history. The first flight across the South Atlantic from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro was made by Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral in 1922. This was also the first aerial crossing using only internal means of navigation, with Coutinho having developed an artificial horizon that revolutionized air navigation.
The pilots Sarmento de Beires and Brito Pais had tried unsuccessfully to fly from Lisbon to Madeira in 1920, and when Coutinho and Cabral beat them to the South Atlantic crossing, they decided that to leave their mark on aviation history they would attempt to fly from Lisbon all the way to Macau. They crowdfunded their efforts through a public subscription and acquired a Bréguet 16, a biplane first used as a night bomber during World War I. Assembled in Amadora, Lisbon, the plane was named Pátria. A famous line from Portugal's national epic, Os Lusíadas, was painted on both sides of the plane: "ESTA É A DITOSA PÁTRIA MINHA AMADA" (This is my beloved Homeland).
The adventure of flying all the way to Macau in such a plane would be a challenging one, and both the start and the end of this "raid" (a term borrowed from the French meaning a long-distance rally) did not go according to plan. Instead of taking off from Amadora in Lisbon, the starting point was instead Vila Nova de Milfontes on the Alentejo coast to the south. Bad weather postponed the start date from April 4 to April 7, 1924.
The journey for the two aviators, accompanied by the mechanic Manuel Gouveia, would take 24 stages, essentially hopping less than 1,000km each flight to cover almost 17,000km in total. The Portuguese adventurers were completely exposed to the elements in the Bréguet's open cockpit, and they wrote about the searing heat flying from Iraq to Iran after making it across North Africa. They also had to deal with storms and even sandstorms. On May 7, exactly a month into their adventure, the three encountered scorching heat after taking off from Karachi (in today's Pakistan), and the resultant thin air wouldn't let the plane gain altitude. After a fierce sandstorm was added to the mix, the three had a rough landing in the Thar Desert near Jodhpur and the Pátria unfortunately broke apart.
Villagers helped gather the pieces and the Portuguese were graciously hosted by the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Sir Umaid Singh. Telegrams went back and forth with Lisbon and eventually a replacement plane, a four-year-old de Havilland DH.9A, was acquired by the Portuguese consul in Bombay. On May 30, the Pátria II took off from Lahore for Ambala. As the Pátria II was a two-seater, the mechanic Gouveia had to follow the aviators by rail, which in the 1920s must also have been quite an exceptional experience.
The remaining stages across Burma, Siam and French Indochina were also marked by rain, crosswinds, thunderstorms and even fog. On June 20, Brito Pais and Sarmento de Beires took off from Sơn Tây near Hanoi for the final 1,000km to Macau. Sure enough, after leaving Tonkin Bay, they encountered intense showers. As they approached Macau, they essentially flew into a typhoon. Unable to land despite catching sight of Ilha Verde and the Portas do Cerco, they pushed on to Hong Kong. Buffeted by the strong winds, the engine lost power and died. The aviators ended their adventure with a forced landing.
There are different accounts of where they landed. In one version they landed near Fanling (粉嶺) in the New Territories of British Hong Kong. Another claims they landed in a cemetery on the Chinese side near what is today the modern city of Shenzhen. As Pátria II could be heard flying overhead over Macau, on the next day, June 21, a Portuguese Navy gunboat went searching for the aviators. After they were located, the damaged plane was dismantled and taken away by the navy boat. On June 25, Sarmento de Beires and Brito Pais finally arrived in Macau.
The governor of Macau arranged for the pilots to return to Portugal via North America, meaning the adventurers circumnavigated the world. They met the Portuguese communities in Shanghai and Tokyo before sailing across the Pacific to Vancouver in Canada. They toured many American cities before sailing to London, and then continued by boat from Southampton to Lisbon where on September 9, 1924, they were given a hero's welcome.
Their legacy was not just the first rally by air from Portugal to its farthest territory, as Pátria was also the first plane to fly across the entire north coast of Africa. Less than two years later, there was a coup d'état in May 1926 which saw the start of the Ditadura Nacional (National Dictatorship), followed by the authoritarian Estado Novo (New State) in 1933. Sarmento de Beires was a political opponent of both, and sadly the Lisbon-Macau Raid was soon suppressed from the public's memory.
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