??? Hours

The buzzards that soar over St. Louis, Mo., were perplexed last week. No idle fliers themselves, they were obliged to alight now and then, to eat, to drink, to sleep, or just to consider with angry red eyes the creature, much bigger than a buzzard, which droned around in circles through the sky all through one week, all through the next week, on into another week, without ever coming down. Now and then another big creature would roar up from the ground and hover solicitously over the soaring one, evidently feeding it or something through a long hose. Other creatures would fly up alongside with queer marks on the sides of their bodies. "HELLO SON-- HERE IS PA AND MA JACKSON," said the marks one time, after the soaring one had been up long enough for a buzzard to sail from St. Louis to the Gulf and back by easy stages. The more-than-400-hour refueling endurance flight, the St. Louis Robin and Pilots Dale Jackson and Forest O'Brine, going on and on as last week ended, was a mystery to buzzards. What could it mean?

It meant:

That Pilots Jackson and O'Brine flew continuously much longer than anything that breathes -- bird or insect -- had ever done before.

That the ratio of human v. mechanical endurance was enormously enlarged in favor of mechanical, to the credit of the Curtiss-Challenger motor.

That the astonishing 246-hr, record of Pilots Loren W. Mendell and Roland B. Reinhart in California was totally eclipsed within a week of their making it (TIME, July 2).

That Pilots Jackson and O'Brine became $2,797 richer every day after they entered their third week.

That endurance refueling flights entered the category of flagpole sittings and marathon dances in laymen's minds, since monotony entered and anything valuable that might be proved about men or machinery seemed proved up to the hilt and beyond.