Downwind

The evening after Wiley Post's homecoming, Floyd Bennett Field was thronged again. A Sunday crowd was there to see Britain's favorite flyers, brawny Capt. James Allan Mollison and his nervy wife, Amy Johnson Mollison. end a nonstop flight from Wales. Theirs was a fantastic venture. They intended to rest a few days in New York, then take off for Bagdad in one jump for a distance record of 6,000 mi. Then they would hop home to London, cash in enough on publicity to retire for life.

In their twin-motored biplane Seafarer they got away neatly from Pendine, Wales. Capt. Moliison, who steered a good course alone over the Atlantic last year (TIME, Aug. 29). steered a good course again. But it was a long, exhausting job. The Seafarer was built for distance, not for speed. When dusk fell a second time the Mollisons were sighted off Connecticut coast. They had made a splendid flight, against headwinds all the way. One hour more and they would land for a tremendous ovation.

But the Mollisons' eyelids were heavy, their muscles shaky, their fuel low. At 9:30 p. m. the Seafarer turned in for the airport at Bridgeport, Conn., 60 mi. short of Floyd Bennett. It buzzed low over the field but instead of heading into the wind, only safe way of taking off or landing a plane, it came downwind, zoomed aloft again. The field manager hopped into a plane, tried to lead the Mollisons to earth by making a landing into the wind in the floodlights. It was no use. The Seafarer, after circling wretchedly six times, stuck to its curious course, inevitably overshot the field, crashed in a swamp.

Rescuers found Amy Mollison sitting in the mud beside the total wreck of the Seafarer, cradling her half-conscious husband's bleeding head in her lap. It took hospital surgeons an hour to stitch the pair's gashes, but they had escaped serious injury. Said he: "I was so tired I couldn't tell where I was putting her." Cried she: "He couldn't see! He couldn't see!"

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