Eurasian Route

Back from Peking came two superplanes to their home in Berlin. Their pilots told the Deutsche Lufthansa (Air League) that not even the Ural Mountains had been an obstacle to an eight weeks' roundtrip; that a passenger route to Peking was perfectly practicable, to be flown in stages with a total of six or seven days in the air. The Lufthansa promptly advertised a provisional service of 40 Berlin-Peking flights for next summer, perhaps with branch lines to Vladivostok and Shanghai.

Doolittle's Doings

Last week a steamship from South America docked in Manhattan and certain matters tof fact were learned from a prosaic, weatherbeaten man on crutches who came ashore. He was Lieut. James H. Doolittle, U.S.A., test pilot of McCook Field (Dayton, Ohio). Having had no vacation for nine years, he had taken one last May, going down to Chile with a 175-m. p. h. pursuit plane to be first U. S. flyer across the Andes.-- Three days after landing in Santiago, he had fallen from a twelve-foot plane-assembling platform and fretted for a month with two broken femurs in plaster. With neither broken leg yet mended, he had fastened clips on his plaster casts to operate the rudder ,bar. After a few trial hops, he had given exhibitions. Then, with his crutches strapped to the fuselage, he had flown 1,100 miles up the wintry Andes to La Paz, Bolivia, and back. After that he flew 730 miles right over the Andes, over 18,000-foot crags, snowy "saddles" and wind-blown pampas, to Buenos Aires. When he landed he had ,two gallons of gasoline left--enough for three more minutes in the air. His bones not yet having knitted properly, Lieutenant Doolittle's next expedition was to a hospital, to have them broken again, reset.

Cobham Home

The sparrows and pigeons that live in a thousand Gothic niches about Britain's Houses of Parliament swarmed up to their nests and then out again in frightened flutter. Some of the pigeons took refuge off in Trafalgar Square, which was singularly empty that afternoon. All of London seemed to have converged upon the Westminister bridgeheads to watch what some old birds eyed knowingly-- one of those loud-droning big creatures with stiff wings that used to fly over Big Ben so often ten years ago. They saw this creature circle Parliament twice, then drive the greedy gulls out of the Thames as it descended with a last roar, a silent glide to the water.

A grinning, roseate man with a shiny hat was one of the first to seize and wring the hands of the tan-faced heroes who soon came ashore from the seaplane and up the Speaker's steps--Air Minister Sir Samuel Hoare congratulating Pilot Alan Cobham and a mechanic-- upon completing an epic of British aviation, a 28,000-mile round trip to farthest Australia (Melbourne) in an all-British De Havilland. There was a polite telegram from King George.

Pilot Cobham, after kissing his wife and child, told them one thing he was particularly glad of: Premier Bruce of Australia had sailed for England by steamship the same day that he, Cobham, had hopped into the air, a month ago. Premier Bruce would dock that day at Marseilles and here was he, Alan Cobham, in spite of a Burmese monsoon, already home again. It spoke well for long distance flying, "from anywhere to anywhere."

Said Pilot Cobham to the press: "It was my idea ... to show the people that there is no stunt about flying. . . . Aviation will make Australia. Instead of farmers being days away from each other they will become a matter of a half-hour or so by plane. ... In Australia it is possible to fly 365 days a year. An English pilot would regard flying in Australia as a rest cure."

"Last year Capt. Castro of Chile was first of all flyers to cross the Andes. --Not, however, Sergt. A. G. Elliott, who started from England with Pilot Gobham but died when a Bedouin rifleman, strolling on the bank of the Euphrates River, took a potshot "for sport" at the strange thing passing overhead. Not Sergeant Ward, either, who volunteered for Elliott's place and flew with Cobham from Arabia to Australia. It was one Captel, a mechanic who substituted for Ward in Australia for the flight home.