Hot Dog

It took the white race from 1492 to 1849 to get insecurely across the continent. From New York to Los Angeles today by rail takes 3 days and 11 and 1/4 hours. By bus it can be done in 5 days and 14 hours. By automobile it recently took 4 days 8 hours and 47 minutes. By foot it has been done (in the "Pyle Marathon") in 23 days 21 hours. By boat, through the Panama Canal, it can beautifully and agreeably be accomplished in about 17 days.

Last week a silver arrow darted suddenly from the East (Roosevelt Field, L. I.), not over 500 feet from the ground, curved gracefully around Mines Field, Los Angeles, settled gently upon the turf. The thing that over 150 patient watchers had been awaiting, trembling with mingled anticipation and dread, had happened. The weary, perilous miles from coast to coast had been covered in 24 hours and 51 minutes. This was 2 hours faster than it had ever been done before.

The silver arrow was the Yankee Doodle, Lockheed-Vega monoplane, completing its return non-stop transcontinental flight. On both flights it established records.

Two tired men were helped from the plane. One was Captain C. B. D. Collyer, onetime air mail flyer, veteran of many a notable flight, who had unassisted and sleepless stuck to the stick all the way from Roosevelt Field, L. I. The other was Harry Tucker of Los Angeles, well-known sportsman, owner of the plane.

Said Owner Tucker: "Boys, there is the greatest pilot you ever saw!" Whereupon he returned to the Yankee Doodle to salvage yet a third conqueror of the airs above the continent It was none other than the ship's mascot--a "hot dog" skillfully converted by the deft use of toothpicks for legs and tail and a ribbon about the neck into an esthetic complement.

When they left Long Island, the fliers took with them 525 gallons of gas. Half an hour longer in the air and they would have had none left. Weather conditions were consistently bad. Flying over the Pennsylvanian Appalachians they encountered what Tucker calls the worst fog he has ever seen. For 1,000 miles they fought a head wind, which retarded their average speed some 20 miles an hour.

The continent has been spanned now three times by air, without stop. In May 1923, Lieutenants John Macready and Oakley Kelly, U. S. Army, flew a Liberty-engined Fokker from Roosevelt Field to San Diego in 26 hours and 50 minutes. Last August this same Yankee Doodle, flown by Col. Arthur Goebel, made the crossing from Los Angeles, Calif., to Curtiss Field, L. I., in 18 hours and 58 minutes. He was aided by a tail wind much of the way.

The importance of these three flights cannot be overestimated. Although ocean flights are undeniably more romantically spectacular they are scarcely more perilous, and, certainly at the present moment, hardly as important to the advancement of practical aviation. Commercial flying must continue for.a while to be chiefly over land.