"Oil Hogs"

Speed was no object for they had 2,060 miles to go; getting there, from Hampton Roads, Va., to Colon, Panama, was the main thing. None the less, the two big seaplanes vanished over the southern horizon seven minutes apart, droning for Cape Hatteras at a smart 80 knots or so. The destroyer Overton, the minesweeper Sandpiper and cruiser Saukee, strung down the Atlantic and stationed off Cuba, turned on their searchlights as dusk fell, tilted their beams at agreed angles into the drizzly night. The cruisers Raleigh and Cincinnati and the minesweeper Swan, stationed at intervals in the Caribbean, stood by to scan the morning horizon. The Navy's latest and perhaps greatest flight was scheduled to take about 24 hours.

The aircraft were the Navy's big new, Packard-motored all-steel PN-10 seaplanes, built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard especially for long-range scouting. The flight to Panama had been planned to test their efficiency and was to have been conducted under the supervision of the late Commander John Rodgers, hero of the Navy flight last year (TIME, Sept. 14, 1925), in a PN9 from California to Hawaii. After Commander Rodgers' ironic death (TIME, Sept. 6), the leadership had passed to Flight Commander Harold T. Bartlett, son of a Connecticut schoolmaster, seconded by Lieut. Byron J. Connell, son of a Monongahela River lockmaster. With these two in the planes numbered for convenience 1 and 2, flew five others, including veterans of the transatlantic flight of the NC-4, the Hawaiian flight and Rene Fonck's catastrophe.

There had been 20 hours of final test-flying at Hampton Roads. Both planes had functioned perfectly when, loaded to weigh ten tons each, they set off (though No. 1, with Lieutenant Connell at the controls, had some difficulty rising). All night the flyers' radio reports told of perfect control and conditions--until dawn, when, cutting across Cuba, Commander Bartlett was obliged to report that his ample oil supply was unaccountably being exhausted. The motors were evidently "oil hogs." He descended at dawn at Nueva Gerona on the Isle of Pines, the non-stop flight half frustrated.

Lieutenant Connell flew on in plane No. 1, but his reports soon paralleled Commander Bartlett's. His starboard engine was heating up, under a furious oil pressure. Then his reports ceased. The Caribbean was silent save for Commander Bartlett's dots and dashes requesting that some Navy ship bring more oil.

At Washington, Admiral Edward W. Eberle, chief of naval operations, gave orders for Commander Bartlett to stand by and then, as the hours passed without any word from Lieutenant Bartlett, commanded 24 Navy vessels--a battleship, cruisers, destroyers, a gunboat, a tug, a storeship and the minesweepers--to drop all other duties, report to the Cincinnati and fan out over the Caribbean on a search immediately.

Late that evening, the Cincinnati found the missing plane, a con necting rod (between crankshaft and cylinder) broken by excessive strain due to oil pressure. Lieutenant Connell and his mates had not had to fall back on their stills (for drinking water) and fishlines--equipment the Hawaiian flight last year proved it advisable to carry.

They towed PN-10 No. 1 into Guantanamo to await the transport Vega, despatched from Philadelphia with a new motor. Lieutenant Connell begged to be allowed to complete his flight but was ordered to pack his plane on the transport and proceed to San Diego, Calif., whither both planes were to have flown from Panama.

The PN-10 No. 2 they filled with oil at the Isle of Pines and Com mander Bartlett, tired but some-what consoled, alighted after eleven hours more flying (900 miles) at Colon. The Navy was far from discredited, but the PN-10 "oil hogs" were far from proven.