Flights & Flyers

At Chagrin Falls. Out from the mountainous, forested pit of Bellefonte, Pa., Gethsemane of eastern airmail pilots, flew National Air Transport's Thomas P. Nelson last week. As he headed west for Cleveland thick snow flurries hid him from the ground. At snow-blown Cleveland Pilot Nelson was late, by minutes, hours, days. Col. Lindbergh, onetime flying companion of the missing man, flew his own machine over the treacherous Alleghenies to join 25 other planes in a systematic search of northern Ohio. Presumption was that Nelson was forced down by ice forming on the wings of his plane. Wing ice changes the air foil to such an extent that the wing no longer exerts a lifting power in forward motion. This trouble and decreased visibility due to fog or snow will bring down the best of pilots. The airmail route between Cleveland and New York is considered the worst in the country, with few landing fields, rugged and forest-covered terrain.

Three days after the disappearance, a rabbit hunter found Nelson 25 miles east of Cleveland near Chagrin Falls, where the Alleghenies give their last, low roll towards the Great Plains. He had jumped just before crashing. The jump apparently stunned him. The half-open folds of his parachute quilted him too thinly. Unconscious, he froze to death, hard by the busy Cleveland to Pittsburgh motor road, the tenth mail flyer to die on the New York-Cleveland route.

High High Wind. Towering over Anacostia, D. C. to test a new climbing plane, the Navy's high flyer Apollo Soucek, holder of the U. S. altitude record (39,140 ft.) encountered a 60 m. p. h. wind at a height of six miles. Up and down he frisked to study its prevalent direction. It blew steadily from the west. Visionary. Apollo Soucek foresaw the day of multi-motored transports roaring out of the west at these heights, driven by this raging gale, across the continent in half the standard 30 hrs. now needed.

Glider Prize. The first U. S. person to glide ten hours in a motorless plane will get a $2,000 prize. Detroit's Edward Steptoe Evans, founder-president of the National Glider Association,* made the offer at the association's dinner in Manhattan last week. The association has a score of affiliated clubs with about 600 members. William Patterson MacCracken, resigned assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, spoke of gliding as a cheapening, accelerating factor in the training of commercial pilots.

Hoppers. Unquenched by high percentage of failures, two flyers last week winner in the Oakland-Honolulu flight of 1927 (TIME, Aug. 29, 1927), in a specially built plane will attempt to fly from Paris to New York solo. Capt. Lewis A. Yancey, Maine-to-Spain non-stopper (TIME, July 22), has in mind a west-east crossing with Emile H. Burgin.

*He is president of Detroit Aircraft Corp., which embraces Lockheed Aircraft Co., Ryan Aircraft Corp., Grosse Ile Airport, Aircraft Development Corp., Parks Air College, Eastman Aircraft Corp., Winton Aviation Engine Co., Blackburn Aeroplane Corp.

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