“The headwind would slow their groundspeed to a crawl, but they proceeded anyway.”
Why didn’t they just go the other way?
Better to land and take off in a headwind. Even today airports place runways based on prevailing winds. The active runway is based on the better headwind.
Think about landing that plane at a groundspeed under 10 mph vs. at a groundspeed of around 60 mph. That's why.
Flying downwind reduces airspeed over the wings. Airspeed over the wings is the vector sum of the aircraft's ground speed and the wind speed. Thus, taking off downwind subtracts from your airspeed, catastrophically reducing lift. Taking off downwind is a good way to turn your nice airplane into a fireball. That's generally frowned upon ...