To Hawaii

It is not difficult to throw a baseball 50 yards and make it hit the broad side of a barn. But how many people can make it hit a designated nail in the broad side of a barn. But how many people can make it hit a designated nail in the broad side of a barn?

With a large Fokker monoplane equipped with three Wright Whirlwind motors, it was not difficult for Lieutenants Lester J. Maitland and Albert F. Hegenberger of the U. S. Army to fly 2,400 miles. But they had to hit the comparatively minute Hawaiian Islands squarely on the head, or run a good chance of drowning in the Pacific.

They left the municipal airport at Oakland, Calif., early in the morning with favorable weather. In the afternoon they hungered, but were unable to find their chicken sandwiches, soup and coffee (which some cautious helpmate had wrapped in a tarpaulin and tucked under the plane's plotting board). When their radio beacon compass went awry, that night, they used the stars. Next morning they landed at Wheeler Field near Honolulu, having completed, in 25 hours, 50 minutes, the longest over-water hop* ever made by man. As honest servants of the U. S. Government, they promptly refused a $10,000 offer made by the San Francisco Examiner for exclusive rights to their story.

Lieut. Maitland, 34, the pilot, is a towering, blond Milwaukee product. He learned to fly at Army training camps during the War. In 1923, he broke the existing world's record for speed by piloting a Curtiss plane at 244.97 miles per hour. He has a daughter, aged 3.

Lieut. Hegenberger, 31, navigator, was born in Boston. He went from a civil engineering course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology into the Aviation Signal Corps of the Army. He has sons, aged 7 and 3.

Smith & Carter. Two hours after the Army plane had left Oakland, two civilians--Pilot Ernest L. Smith and Navigator Charles H. Carter--set out to race it to Hawaii in a little Travelair plane. An unusual accident, the breaking of the navigator's windshield, caused the Travelair to return to Oakland in ten minute's.

* Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger flew 2,400 miles without seeing land. The greatest over-water distance of the Atlantic flights is the 1,800 miles between Newfoundland and Ireland.