Frenchmen Across Again

In September 1930 Frenchmen Dieudonne Coste & Maurice Bellonte reversed the Lindbergh route by flying non-stop from Paris to New York (3,600 mi.). Last week two other Frenchmen, Maurice Rossi & Paul Codos, set out from Paris to fly non-stop to California (6,200 mi.) and thus beat their own world's distance record set last year (New York-Syria, 5,657 mi.). Their plane, built five years ago by old Louis Bleriot, was named Joseph LeBrix after the famed French flyer who crashed to death in Russia three years ago. To spur them on the French Government offered a prize of one million francs ($66,000). Prevailing tailwinds sped them safely over the North Atlantic. Above Newfoundland they ran into fog and motor trouble. At Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, 2,600 mi. short of their goal, they landed, having flown 3,600 mi. in 38 hr. 27 min. 11 hr. 10 min. slower than Coste & Bellonte). A great thing done twice loses much of its public appeal. But France made Rossi a captain in the Air Force and Codos a commander of the Legion of Honor. And France's President Albert Lebrun took an airplane ride--the first any President in office has taken in the history of the Republic.

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