Flights & Flyers

Cross-Country Refueling. "I am tired now, Art is tired, we haven't shaved since we left Spokane, our clothes are soiled and greasy, our ears are humming, so I guess we'll go home. My wife and my baby Patricia are waiting for me, and Art's mother is waiting for him." So read Lieut, Nick B. Mamer's report to North American Newspaper Alliance of the 115-hour cross-country refueling flight which he and Pilot Art Walker made last fortnight in the Buhl biplane Sun God (TIME, Aug. 26).

The linear distance of the Spokane-New York-Spokane shuttle is 7,200 miles. The air distance traveled by the Sun God was approximately 10,000 miles. The added distance resulted from the pilots having to detour some bad weather spots. "At Rock Springs in the heart of the Rocky Mountains we found it necessary to fly between ten and twelve thousand feet. . . . Bad air at North Platte made refueling almost impossible. . . . Over the Allegheny Mountains we got the customary storms. We would start to fly west and get a storm signal. We would then start back for New York and get storm signals. It seemed as though storm signals were all around us." At Miles City, Mont., their refueling plane passed them gas in milk cans. Over mountains forest fire smoke troubled them. In any case, 7,200 or 10.000 miles, the Sun God covered more distance non-stop than any other humans have ever done.* Chief significance: repeated refuelings in varied weather.

United Aircraft & Transport immediately requested the Army Air Corps to test continuous refueling flights over the transcontinental air mail route. The Corps complied, appointed Captain Ira Eaker (Question Mark refueling flight chief) and First Lieut. B. S. Thompson as pilots.

Swiss. Two Swiss flyers, Oscar Kaesar, 22, and Kurt Luescher, 21, neither of them a navigator, flew from Lisbon, Portugal, toward New York last fortnight. A German steamer saw them near the Azores. No one has seen them since. Total number of flyers lost trying to fly the Atlantic westward: 12.

Laws. To draft a uniform aviation code to be adopted by all States, government representatives, legislators, lawyers and flyers met at Mineola, L. I., last week. Their preliminary recommendations included punishments for flying while drunk, reckless stunting, flying so low as to endanger persons on the ground, making too much noise with the motor, landing on and damaging private property. During the past year state legislatures entertained 250 heterogeneous bills on aviation. Of these 106 were enacted.

The Lindberghs. Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh telephoned from Hicksville, L. I., to his friend, William Patterson MacCracken, outgoing Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics at Washington, to say that medical inspectors had found Mrs. Anne Morrow Lindbergh physically fit for flying. Besides her husband could testify she was ready for solo flying after 9 hrs. of dual-control instruction. Would Mr. MacCracken please mail her a student pilot license? Mr. MacCracken obliged. Pilot Anne Morrow Lindbergh thereupon flew solo.

Later she took her husband up in a dual-control training plane. Along came a similar plane piloted by one John Austin and containing a news photographer. Col. Lindbergh took control of his plane and tried to elude the photographer's plane by barrel rolls, Immelmanns, side slips. The other plane kept with him. The Pilots Lindbergh, vexed, landed. Later, the two alternating, flew to the Cleveland air races.

Cross-Country Flight. To indicate that fast cross-country flying is commercially feasible Capt. Roscoe Turner flew a Wasp-motored Lockheed-Vega with four passengers from Glendale (Los Angeles), Cal., to Roosevelt Field, L. I., in 19 hrs. 52 min. last week, stopping for gas at Albuquerque, Tulsa, Louisville, Cincinnati. After a rest he and his passengers turned westward, stopped four times to refuel, were forced down by storms and fog at Tulare, Cal., after 24 hrs. Capt. Frank M. Hawks, coast-to-coast record holder, with a similar Lockheed-Vega, has made the easterly flight with one passenger in 18 hrs. 22 min. (TIME, Feb. 18), with no passengers in 17 1/2 hrs. (TIME, July 8). As reward for Flyer Turner's effort Governor Frederick Bennett Balzar of Nevada last week appointed him a lieutenant colonel.

*The Graf Zeppelin covered almost 7,000 miles over Europe and Asia. Endurers Mamer and Walker generally flew at more than 100 miles an hour. Prior endurance flyers droned around over airports at speeds little more than sufficient to keep them aloft.