On this day, January the 14th, in the year of 1943, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began a 17,000-mile trip from Miami, Florida to Casablanca, Morocco to meet with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

With the threat of German U-boats sinking U.S. ships in the Atlantic Ocean, it was deemed that the President traveling by it would be too dangerous, so, it was arranged for FDR to travel in the  air.

To avoid a potential attack from Axis forces, the trip took a convoluted route to maintain secrecy. From Florida, the plane flew to the Caribbean, then to Brazil, then Across the Atlantic to Africa, then up to its Northwest to Morocco, where the two leaders strategized. 

The airplane would in later years become one of the president’s main ways of travel.

While before this trip, FDRs distant cousin President Theodore Roosevelt was on an airplane in 1910, it wasn’t on official U.S. business (Smithsonian Magazine) (History).

To read more daily facts and tidbits and about aviation, see the Barron Perspectives “On this Day Archives” webpage and articles such as “(Wright Brothers) On This Day – December 17th”.