Flights, Fliers

Leo J. McGinn was carrying the air mail from Cleveland to Chicago. He ran into a snowstorm and a 50 m. p. h. gale near Huron, Ohio, lost control of his plane. It fell on an apple tree, caromed into a barn owned by an undertaker. Pilot McGinn was decapitated as he was thrown from the cockpit. The barn, the plane and the mail bags burned quickly in the cold, whistling night.

Later in the week, four men were burned to death when a mail and passenger plane crashed near Chattanooga, Tenn.

Ruth McConnell, 20, of Rochester, N. Y., took train for San Francisco one day last week. Three days later, David O. Meeker, medical student, also of Rochester, appeared at the Omaha, Neb., airport and hired a plane to take him to San Francisco. Word got around that Mr. Meeker was chasing Miss McConnell; the press played up the affair as if it were some sort of Derby. Miss McConnell won, arriving in San Francisco a day ahead of Mr. Meeker. It developed that Miss McConnell had been in a nervous condition and that Mr. Meeker, a friend of her family, wanted to make sure that nothing happened to her.

How many days can a crew of five endure a continuous airplane flight? How many days can a motor keep the plane going? The Army wants to know. So do motor and plane makers, passenger and freight carriers. One condition of such tests is that the plane be fueled in the air. An initial experiment took place at Boiling Field, Washington, last week. While a trimotored Fokker army transport flew at 80 m. p. h., a light refueling plane hovered above her and pumped down gasoline and oil through hoses, dropped food with a rope. The preliminary test worked. So the Fokker and a refueling plane set out for Los Angeles where the break-down tests of men or motors will take place. The name of the Fokker is whimsically Question Mark.

Little known is the fact that Poet-Flyer Gabriel d'Annunzio's son, Captain Ugo V. d'Annunzio, has been in the U. S. for several years representing the Isotta-Fraschini Motors, Inc. Last week Captain d'Annunzio became a director of the American Aeronautical Corp., newly organized to manufacture Italian Savoia seaplanes and flying boats in this country.

Viola Gentry of Gentry, N. C.. dressed herself snugly at Roosevelt Field, L. I., last week, and took up a Travel Air plane, equipped with Siemens-Halske motor. She sought and gained something that has no real aeronautical importance--the woman's endurance record. Her time aloft alone was 8 hrs. 6 min. 37 sec., better than Lady Sophie Heath's 77-hr, record made earlier this year. Sixteen years ago, when planes were a novel and dangerous experiment, Ruth Law stayed up six hours. Neither the National Aeronautic Association or the Federation Aeronautique Internationale pays attention to such flights made by women as women. The recognized world endurance record is 65 1/2 hours.

Richard E. James, 17, of Flushing, L. I., a fortnight ago flew a Travel Air all alone from San Francisco home. Because he was the first boy under 21 to make a transcontinental solo flight, the American Society for the Promotion of Aviation gave him a $1,000 prize, Siemens & Halske Motor Co. (whose engine drove his plane) gave him a silver loving cup, and, last week, President Coolidge shook his hand.

The barrel roll is a flying stunt in which the plane twists wing-end over wing-end while driving forward. It is an excellent test of staunch plane construction. Last week at St. Louis, Test Pilot Dale Jackson of the Curtiss Robertson Mfg. Co., barrel-rolled a Curtiss Robin plane 417 times, a record.