Races

For a few minutes Major James Harold ("Jimmy") Doolittle made his plane roar through the still clear air above the Mojave Desert. He paused at Albuquerque, again at Kansas City, zoomed above more nickering towns, fields and villages, landed in a splash of mud at Cleveland. There were thunderstorms between Cleveland and Newark. He crouched in his cockpit while the rain scarred the edges of the wings. When he landed his tiny secretly built Laird biplane in Newark, 11 hr. 16 min. and 10 sec. after his first take-off Major Doolittle had broken the transcontinental record made by Captain Frank Monroe Hawks a year ago by 1 hr. 8 min. and 53 sec. He drank several glasses of water, hopped back to Cleveland where his previous stop had made him winner of the Bendix trophy race from Burbank, Calif.

Three days later, another flyer made a record in the No. 1 event of National Air Race week at Cleveland, the 100-mi. Thompson Trophy Race. Lowell Bayles, onetime coal miner, of Springfield, Mass., flying a Gee-Bee speedster, covered the 100 miles in 25 min. 23:88 sec. His average speed, 236 m.p.h., was 35 m.p.h. better than the late Charles W. ("Speed") Holman's when he won the race a year ago.

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