Two exploits in 1919 made headlines around the world. In June, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown won the prize of £10,000 offered by the Daily Mail for being the first to fly non-stop in an aeroplane from any point in North America to any point in Great Britain or Ireland in under seventy-two hours. The following month, there was another triumph of British aviation. His Majesty's Airship R.34 made the first round-trip crossing of the Atlantic by air.

The Meteorological Office was one of the organizations which provided technical support for these ventures. For the flight of Alcock and Brown, meteorologists and instruments were sent to Newfoundland, the Azores and Lisbon, along with equipment for observing the upper air. For the flights of the airship, two RAF meteorological officers equipped with kites were assigned to the battle cruisers Tiger and Renown stationed north and south of the usual tracks of Atlantic steamships, providing observations which proved useful not only for providing information about flying conditions at heights up to about 600 metres but also for the production of synoptic weather charts of the North Atlantic. Moreover, the airship carried a meteorologist, Guy Harris, who had, in the spring of 1919, investigated the upper air over the North Atlantic with kites he flew from the cargo steamer Montcalm on voyages between London and New Brunswick.