Yellow Giant

Imagine a gigantic yellow bird, with wingspread of 67 feet, weighing some 6,000 pounds, carrying an additional load of 11,000 pounds. Imagine that bird losing necessary flying speed a few feet above the ground, trying to land in a marsh at 70 miles per hour. In such a bird, last week, were Lieut. Commander Noel Davis and Lieut. Stanton Hall Wooster, crack flyers of the U. S. Navy. They were making their last test flight in the trimotored American Legion, preparatory to attempting a non-stop jump from the U. S. to Paris. Loaded with enough gasoline to cross the Atlantic, their plane roared along the ground at Langley Field, near Hampton, Va. Gradually, almost painfully, it rose to a height of some 50 feet. A row of trees, planted years ago by an industrious pioneer, now rose up to thwart these air pioneers. Lieutenant Wooster turned the beak of the American Legion, slightly, ever so slightly. With that turn, the plane lost flying speed. A landing was now imperative. Marshes, mud flats, duck ponds yawned below. Upon a small patch of green, Lieutenant Wooster made a perfect landing--an almost unheard-of feat with a plane loaded so heavily. The yellow giant skidded across the green marsh into the muddy waters of a shallow duck pond, wherein the giant's beak stuck. Its tail completed a semicircle. In its cockpit lay Lieutenant Wooster with his neck broken, Commander Davis with his face crushed--both lifeless in a gloomy pool of water and gasoline. Thoughtfully, they had turned off the ignition, so that the giant did not catch fire. To Noel Davis--Mormon, cowpuncher, high in his class at Annapolis, intrepid minelayer and minesweeper in the North Sea, Harvard law student, with a pretty wife and a little son, Noel Jr.; and To Stanton Hall Wooster--Connecticut Yankee, Yale student and Annapolis graduate, once lost in a wrecked plane in Panama jungles, one of the U. S. Navy's most skilled pilots, with no living relatives except an aunt and an uncle --many a tribute was paid. Said Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd, whose own wrist was broken (TIME, April 25) when the New York-to-Paris Fokker monoplane America turned turtle: "Davis and Wooster were my old friends. I am shocked beyond expression. They were brilliant, courageous air pioneers. The loss to aviation is irreparable. . . . They would want me to ask the people of this country not to associate the unfortunate accident of pioneers with commercial aviation, which puts safety first. . . ."

P-A-N

A whiskey peer's petite daughter stalling her huge Daimler Double Six in traffic at Picadilly Circus. . . A stout soprano anxiously cranking her Ford backward in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. . . A bony art student swerving her lemon-colored Citroen into a swaying taxi to avoid a Paris pushcart. . . Perhaps the memory of such typical incidents as these influenced members of the International Commission on Air Navigation, who assembled in London last week, and were called upon to decide whether women should be licensed to operate commercial aircraft. A decision had to be made, and quickly, for Mme. Boland, famed French aviatrix, was threatening to sue the Commission should its policy of excluding women as commercial pilots be continued. Mme. Boland claimed that dozens of French women, "in these hard times," are anxious to brace their family budgets with the stiff pay of air pilots. Dared the Commission flout the honest aviatrices of France ? Soon Sir Philip Sassoon, British Under-Secretary of State for Air, and Chairman of the Conference, made a gracious announcement: "Beginning immediately, women may apply for licenses to pilot commercial aircraft in all countries which are represented on the Commission. . . .* We have always been accustomed to regard women as ministering angels, even though we have hitherto hesitated to endow them officially with wings." Further Motions Carried: 1) The letters "P A N"* were adopted as the airman's code call for help, except in cases of extreme distress, when "S O S"š will be used. 2) The word "aerodina" will be submitted to all governments with the recommendation that it replace the present usage (i. e.: "aeroplane" in English, aeronaut in French, luft-schiff in German, arioplano in Italian, etc.). 3) Aerodinas must hereafter keep to the left when following railway tracks, roads, rivers, etc.; and when crossing any of these land highways shall cross over at right angles to the land highway. 4) Aerodinas belonging to the League of Nations will be designated on their wings by the letters "A D N" through which two parallel lines are drawn. Aerodinas thus designated will, it is recommended, be eventually granted permission to cross any frontier without formality.

Off New Point Comfort

Chesapeake Bay lay flat and balmy, but corners of the sky looked ugly. Two Navy seaplanes, flying so high they looked like a pair of mating canvas backs, hummed over the reedy bays, bound for Hampton Roads from Philadelphia. Off New Point Comfort they slanted down. The sky was scowling, muttering. Angry lightnings flickered. The Bay began to hiss and crackle under a heavy downpour. The thunder raised its shouts to a cannonade.

Chief Boatswain George F. Kahle, piloting the rear plane, straining his eyes through the rain squalls, turned suddenly pale. The leading plane had, at one blinding sheet of lightning, given off smoke and splinters and instantly plunged below, upside down like a shot duck.

Landing his own craft on the Bay, Chief Boatswain Kahle taxied about for an hour, found no trace of Lieutenants Victor F. Marinelli and George Lehman, nor of Machinist Mates L. E. Poyner and George M. McMichaels. The U. S. S. Teal, Navy tender, patrolled all that night but its searchlight picked out nothing beyond fragments of wing fabric, pieces of fuselage. Against lightning, rarely an accurate enemy, flyers of steel birds have no defense.

*Germany and the U. S. are not represented. *First three letters of the French word panne, meaning "difficulty." The English flying term, "pancake," a verb describing a method of coming to earth with supporting surfaces of the ship flattened to retard the descent and prevent somersaulting, does not connote disaster though fliers are sometimes obliged to "pancake" when damage to their controls or weather and ground conditions make other tactics impossible. šThe original marine distress signal was "C Q D" ("Come Quick Danger"). This was replaced by the simplest and most unmistakable code letters "S O S " (. . . . -- -- -- . .). To these three letters unofficial meanings have been fitted without number: "Save Our Ship," "Send Out Ships," "Save Our Souls," "Sink Or Swim."