France to Manchuria

A great red airplane landed last week in northwestern Manchuria near the Siberian border, where Chinese and Russians have been fighting off and on for three months (TIME, July 22 et seq.). Two grimy men clambered out of the machine, then scrambled for a barricade, for threatening natives were running at them. The aviators gestured placatingly. They tried to pantomime that they were Frenchmen. Dieudonne Costes and Maurice Jacques Bellonte, that they had flown from Paris in an attempt to make a non-stop record over Europe and Asia, and that the exhaustion of their gasoline and oil had forced them to land willy-nilly. The Chinese insisted that they were Russian spies. Was not their plane painted the red of the Soviets? And away they took the Frenchmen 40 miles to Tsitsihar, town on the Chinese Eastern Railroad. There the captors telegraphed Chang Hsueh-liang, Governor of Manchuria, of the arrests. He, more news-wise than the people, rewired that the Frenchmen be handled politely, be given aid for continuance of their flight.

Later Dieudonne Costes and Maurice Jacques Bellonte sent a despatch claiming that between Paris and their Manchurian stop they had covered approximately 6,160 miles, thus surpassing the 4,500-mile, Italy-to-Brazil non-stop record.

Balloon Race

For the third time in recent years St. Louis last week saw swollen balloons sway foolishly for the start of a James Gordon Bennett International Balloon Race. The race has occurred each year since 1906, except for the War period.

Nine balloons rose from St. Louis into a wind blowing moderately toward the east. Many of their pilots and aids had been in previous races and it was to be expected that they would surpass themselves in distance and time aloft. But the longest duration was 28 hours, by Belgium's Capt. Ernest Demuyter, winner of four James Gordon Bennett races. He landed only 230 miles from his takeoff. That was comparatively not so bad for the unofficial winner of the race, Ward Tunte Van Orman, Goodyear Tire & Rubber engineer and twice before a Race winner, traveled only 347 miles, poorest winning distance of any of the 18 races so far held.*

Flights & Flyers

Scared Football Players. At Tuscaloosa, Ala. (not to be confused with Tuskeegee, Ala., site of the Tuskeegee Institute for Negroes), the University of Alabama football squads were practicing last week on a rainy, soggy field. Football is their very serious occupation, for every university student pays $13.50 for the support of athletics (and the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A.), and can see every home game free because of that. As the footballers scrimmaged, a plane piloted by one Johnnie Howe who was having motor trouble in the rain, sought to land, but flew away when the players came within sight. Wallace A. Wade, University athletic director and football coach, swore out and had served on Pilot Howe a warrant charging him with "recklessly driving a motor vehicle" and scaring his football squads.

Solo Endurance. Vern Speich, Santa Ana, Calif., automobile salesman, kept his plane up 38 hrs., 48 sec. at Long Beach, Calif., last week, thus breaking the non-refueling solo endurance record (36 hrs., 56 min., 36 sec.) of Lieut. Herbert J. Fahy.

National Air Tour (Ford Reliability Trophy). From Detroit last week started a great caravan of 20 competing planes plus ten press and service planes. They constituted the fifth annual national air tour and were competing for the Edsel Ford Reliability Trophy and $16,000 in prizes. During 16 days they were to stop at 32 Canadian and U. S. cities.

* In the first (1906) race Frank P. Lahm, also an American, covered 402 miles. Longest race distance was France's Maurice Bienaime's 1,354 miles in 1912.