Today, on 4 February in 1920, the first air flight took off from London to Cape Town. The flight took 45 days with a total flight time of 109 hours and 30 minutes, owing to crash landings in the Sudan and Bulawayo. But they made it. And 95 years later here we are, telling the story.

On 4 February, two South African pilots, Lt. Col Pierre van Ryneveld and Lt. Col Christopher Joseph Qunitin Brand set out for the Cape in a Vickers Vimy named the Silver Queen.

The two pilots took 11 hours to cross the Mediterranean, owing to bad weather conditions, and wrote their aircraft off in a forced landing at Wadi Halfa in Sudan due to a leaking radiator.

11 days later they continued on their journey in a second Vimy F8615, which was loaned from the Royal Air Force at Heliopolis, in Egypt.

The Silver Queen II crashed on 6 March in Bulawayo as it was overloaded. A de Havilland DH9, which was part of the Imperial Gift, was flown to Bulawayo to allow the South African pilots to complete their journey.

They set off for the final leg of their journey on 17 March and landed three days later at Young’s Field in Wynberg, Cape Town.

Van Ryneveld and Brand were knighted for this achievement.