"Dear Sir

We have in our collection the Vickers Vimy aircraft which was flown from St John's to Clifden in June 1919 by Alcock & Brown.

I have been trying to write a fresh account of this flight and am keen to fill some gaps in our information about various details. I would be grateful for any help you can give on two particular topics.

(1) Can you provide a map which shows the locations of the two fields near St John's from which the aircraft was flown? It was assembled near Quidi Vidi Lake, and then flown over to Lester's Field (or Monday's Pool) from where the Atlantic Flight was made. Unfortunately we do not have any maps with sufficient detail to identify these two sites.

(2) I am uncertain about the relation between local time and Greenwich Mean Time on the day of the flight. From the evidence available here, it seems that local time in 1919 was 3 hours 31 minutes behind G.M.T. (altered to 3 hours 30 minutes about 1935). But I do not know whether Daylight Saving Time was used in Newfoundland in the summer of 1919. According to various references, D.S.T. was introduced in the USA and Canada in 1918, but was dropped in Canada in 1919 and in the USA in 1920. Newfoundland being independent may not have adopted it at all, and I am quite unsure whether it was kept in 1919. References here suggest that Daylight Saving Time was re-introduced in Newfoundland about 1934.

Brown's account of the day of the flight suggests that he had his watch set to G.M.T. all day ("we sat under the wings at two o'clock and lunched"), but when he says "we were called before dawn, and joined them on the aerodrome at 3.30 am", I am unsure whose time he refers to. The accepted figure for the time of take-off is 16.13 G.M.T.

If you can clarify these matters I would be most grateful [etc]"