3 Records, 3 Months

Every nation wants for itself the glory of making and breaking records. Italy is no exception. Vexed because major aeronautical records were scarce in Italy, because the Schneider Cup race had been lost to England, Dictator Mussolini last winter ordered civil aviators to concentrate on the problem of record-gathering. Obligingly, three faithful Fascists chalked up three new records in a little more than three months.

Major Mario de Bernardi, hero of the 1926 Schneider Cup race, when Italy wrested the trophy from the U. S., was the first to obey Mussolini's command. Already the holder of the seaplane speed record, he went up last March and averaged 318.57 miles an hour over a measured course, beating his own record by more than 20 miles (TIME, April 9).

Scarcely had the echoes of this achievement died down when two veteran Italian aviators turned to the record business in earnest. Captain Arturo Ferrarin, 32-year-old War veteran, pilot of bombers and pursuit planes, was a member of the victorious 1926 Schneider Cup team. Major Carlo P. Delprete accompanied Commander Francesco de Pinedo on his tour of the Americas in 1927. No tyros, these two airmen chose a thick-winged Savoia-Marchetti monoplane, set out to break the endurance record won for the U. S. by Stinson and Haldeman. They remained in the air 58 hours and 34 minutes, bringing another major record to Italy.

Dictator Mussolini, eager for records, frowned upon trans-Atlantic hops. To Record-Holders Ferrarin and Delprete, however, he could not refuse permission to attempt the long and difficult flight from the mainland of Europe to South America. Pilot Clarence Duncan Chamberlin and Passenger Charles A. Levine had set the airline distance record at 3,911 miles with their flight from Roosevelt Field (N. Y.) to Eisleben, Germany. The distance from Rome to Brazil, by any calculation, is over 4,000 miles. Ferrarin and Delprete took off from Monticelio Flying Field, Rome, last week, in the same single-motored Savoia-Marchetti which had weathered the endurance test.

They were in the air for more than two days, within one minute of 52 hours, before they landed at Point Genipabu, ten miles north of Natal, Brazil, having flown 4,417 miles* to give Dictator Mussolini his third major record of the year.

Italy's press burst into florid rhetoric. The Nobile disaster had pained and depressed the most patriotic editors, but Ferrarin and Delprete pushed the Polar Pilgrim into obscure corners. Typical of the unrestrained expression of the newspapers was the comment of Lavoro: "It almost seems that today in all the skies of the world can be heard the palpitating of Italian wings; from the overcast skies of the Arctic regions to the scintillating heavens of the tropics is being carried that great magic word, 'Italia,' by intrepid hearts and by robust wings. ..." Somewhat obscurely, La Tribuna mused: "We are in the presence of the flight of an entire generation of Italians and we ourselves are at once actors and spectators."

Should Dictator Mussolini's eagerness remain unsatisfied, what can obedient Fascists add to Italy's aeronautical glories? Rival nations reflected, last week, that many a record still withstands the Italian onslaught. Among them:

Balloons:

Endurance (Germany)--Hugo Kaulen, 87 hrs.

Distance (Germany)--Berliner, 1,896.9 miles.

Altitude (Germany)--Suring and Berson, 35,424 feet.

Airships:

Altitude (France)--Cohen, 10,102 feet.

Airplanes:

Altitude (U. S.)--Lt. C. C. Champion, 38,474 feet.

Speed (France)--Bonnett, 278.480 m.p.h.

Seaplanes:

Distance (U. S.)--Lts. B. J. Connell and H. C. Rodd, 1,569 miles.

Distance, Airline (U. S.)--Commander John Rodgers, U.S.N., and Lt. B. J. Connell, 1,841 statute miles.

Altitude (U. S.)--Lt. C. C. Champion, U. S. N., 37,995 feet.

Parachutes:

Forced jumps (U. S.)--Col. Chas. A. Lindbergh, 4 times.

While Italian wings were palpitating in far Brazil, Pilots Johann Risticz and Hans Zimmermann of the German Junkers Works, quietly took the duration record away from Ferrarin and Delprete, from rhetoric-loving Italia. They flew a plane of the Bremen type over Dessau, Leipzig, Kottbus, for 65 hours, 31 minutes.

*By Brazilian calculations. At Rome, the figure was placed at 4,500 miles or over.