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Though the 8,848 meters high summit of Mount Everest was first conquered on foot by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in 1953, but it was conquered by air two decades earlier on 3rd April 1933, by Lieut. David McIntyre and Sir Douglas Douglas Hamilton.
The idea for a flight expedition over the world’s tallest mountain “Mount Everest” was proposed in the 1918 by a British mountaineering physiologist, Alexander Mitchell Kellas in his journal “The Possibility of Aerial Reconnaissance in the Himalayas.” The attempt could not be made possible without significant financial backing and in September 1932, RAF squadron leader Douglas Hamilton, otherwise known as Lord Clydesdale, who visited Lady Houston at her Scottish shooting estate, Kinrara, to ask her to fund the expedition. Lord Clydesdale, Douglas Hamilton, was the youngest squadron leader in the British Royal Air Force who was born to Alfred, 13th Duke of Hamilton. Douglas Hamilton commanded 602 Squadron and was Chief Pilot of the Houston Mount Everest Flying Expedition. Lieut. David McIntyre was also of 602 Squadron.
Expedition took off from Lalbalu Airfield, India at 8:25 am and returned at 11:30 marking it as the first successful flight, on April 3, 1933. Lord Clydesdale flew a modified Westland PV-3 biplane, registered G-ACAZ accompanied by Colonel Stewart Blacker. Following them in a Westland PV-6, (prototype of the Westland Wallace bomber), registered G-ACBR (and also known as the Houston-Wallace) was Flight Lieutenant David McIntyre and photographer R.G. Bonnett.
Observer Lieutenant Colonel Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker accompanied Lord Clydesdale and Sidney R.G. Bonnett, a photographer for Gaumont British News accompanied McIntyre. The crew members were flying without the benefit of pressurized cabins, and relied on oxygen tanks to breathe. At one point in the flight, Bonnett lost consciousness due to hypoxia upon damaging his oxygen mask. The planes carried supplies to last 15 minutes over the mountains with inbuilt heating. He quickly tied a handkerchief around the breach, and was able to resume his duties without losing consciousness. The expediters were dressed in multi-layer of sheepskin clothing.
The first expedition could not obtain clear photographs because of dust and debris. So they made another attempt on April 19, 1933, the pictures of which assisted Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to the top of Mount Everest. The camera used was a Williamson Automatic Eagle III which took photographs of the surface at specific intervals as the airplanes flew over known survey locations with the aim of obtaining a photographic mosaic of the terrain and an accurate geographical map. The photographs from the expedition were made public in 1951.
After 30 minutes' flying we passed over Forbesganj, our forward emergency landing ground forty miles from Purnea, and at a height of 19,000 feet Everest first became visible above the haze. -LORD CLYDESDALE
Lord Clydesdale was awarded the British Air Force Cross for his leadership of the expedition, and the footage shot by Bonnett was cut into the Academy Award-winning documentary “Wings Over Everest.”
A successful climb of Everest was as much a political event as a sporting one, and Lady Houston certainly saw her flight expedition as a way to express British superiority to 'restless native peoples'. Even Kellas celebrated the political and military potential of flight, writing in his article on Everest that
“The aerial traveler might start from Gibraltar and explore the territory of the fanatical tribesmen of Southern Morocco with impunity, obtaining material for mapping the country and the western Atlas Mountains.”
It is a splendid achievement — not for any material gains, any additions to aeronautical knowledge that it brings, for it brings few or none, but simply because it was one of the few last great spectacular flights in aviation which remained to be done. -THE GUARDIAN, APRIL 4, 1933
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