Walter Hinton

Walter T. Hinton ( 10 November 1888 - 28 October 1981) was a United States aviator.

Hinton was born in a farming family in Van Wert, Ohio. Seeing a poster urging young men to "Join the Navy and See The World", he joined the United States Navy. He saw action in the 1914 United States occupation of Veracruz, Mexico. Hinton had a great fascination with early aircraft, and soon went into Naval aviation.

Hinton achieved fame as the pilot of the Curtiss NC flying boat "NC-4", the first aircraft to make a transatlantic flight, in 1919.^[1] Hinton and Kloor wrote letters to an outside publisher describing the flight, which prompted the Navy to start enforcing rarely used censorship rules.^[2]

Hinton's aeronautic adventures during the 1920s include exploring the Arctic by balloon, A wayward flight from Rockaway, Queens to Moose Factory, Ontario in the winter causing a month long hike to civilization^[3], making the first flight from North America to South America (on the second try—he floated on a wing in shark infested waters off Cuba for a while at the end of the first try), and exploring the Amazon Rainforest by hydroplane. In this last role you can see pictures of him on pages 379 and 404 of the April 1926 National Geographic Magazine.

He spent years touring as a speaker promoting aviation.

Hinton spent his retirement in a beach front condominium in Pompano Beach, Florida, where he delighted in sharing his memories with local children. One of his happiest events of his later years was being a special guest on an early supersonic transatlantic flight of the Concorde, making the trip which had first taken Hinton 19 days in less than 4 hours.

Hinton was President and Founder of the Aviation Institute of U.S.A Washington D.C. in 1927 and 1928 where he published several periodicals on aviation. ^[4] Periodicals included Opportunities in Aviation ^[5], The Wright Whirlwind Motor, Pioneers in Aviation, and Aviation Progress.

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