Safe Flying

Trials to win $100,000 for the safest plane extant began at Mitchel Field, L. I., last week. The Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics provided the prize money, and an additional $10,000 for each of the first five planes to qualify in the contest. Entries must register before Oct. 3. Until last week only a dozen were listed as competitors. Six were U. S. makes.*

The purpose of the Guggenheim Fund contest is to get a plane not merely safe in skilled hands, but foolproof under all kinds of conditions. Such a plane must be able to land slowly, take off quickly, climb steeply, glide either at flat or steep angles and remain under control at all speeds and altitudes, even though weather conditions prevent the pilot keeping on even keel.

Hence prize contestants must fly level at no faster than 35 m.p.h., get a variable speed in normal flight of 45 m.p.h. to 100 m.p.h., glide three minutes at 38 m.p.h. with engine shut off, land within a 100-ft. space, take off in 300 ft., gain more than 35 ft. altitude within 500 ft. of starting takeoff, and fly "hands off." A manufacturer's pilot may put the plane through its best maneuvers. Guggenheim Fund pilots then try the plane themselves.

Last week at Mitchel Field a new Brunner-Winkle biplane was the only contestant present. Its pilots took her up. Then appeared the Guggenheim Fund's pilot, the man whom Fund President Harry F. Guggenheim has fostered for two years in order to focus U. S. attention on aviation--Charles Augustus Lindbergh. With Mrs. Lindbergh he had returned in his motor cruiser Mouette from honeymooning off the New England coast to the estate of Daniel Guggenheim, Fund creator, and was ready for work. He first flew Harry F. Guggenheim for 15 minutes in the Brunner-Winkle craft. Then he took Mrs. Lindbergh up for a ride in a Curtiss Falcon.

Ten years ago Daniel Guggenheim, whose Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics has helped U. S. aviation more than any other private agency, resigned from most of his business connections to give himself to benevolencies.

The Guggenheim fortune began with laces and embroideries in Philadelphia, whither Meyer Guggenheim migrated from Switzerland in 1848. Meyer and Barbara Myers Guggenheim had seven sons. Daniel went to Switzerland when he was but 17 to buy goods for the Philadelphia store. While he was away his father invested in some Colorado mines. When Daniel returned to the U. S. the family moved their lace & embroidery business, as M. Guggenheim's Sons, to Manhattan.

It was very prosperous. But the mining investments promised more fortune. The sons sold the lace & embroidery business and went to Colorado. They finally consolidated a great lead and silver industry. The sons are noted in U. S. business for working as a unit. Daniel's ability was rated akin to genius. After his father, he was the leader of the Guggenheims./-

The brothers organized the American Smelting & Refining Co. and the Chile Copper Co. (cheapest and greatest copper producers). They developed copper mines in Alaska, tin mines in Bolivia and nitrate beds in Chile. Daniel Guggenheim, with the late Thomas Fortune Ryan and Bel gian, French and Portuguese financiers and politicians, worked up diamond mines in the Congo region. The Guggenheims, Daniel and his brothers, attribute much of their fortune to their hiring experts at no matter what cost and to maintaining the welfare of their employes.

To social welfare Daniel Guggenheim turned in 1919, when he was 63. To the welfare of aviation he turned two Junes before Lindbergh flew to Paris. His aim was to make aviation a public utility. He gave New York University $500,000 for a School of Aeronautics. Next he established his Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, with $2,500,000 endowment. The Fund has in its two and a half years given $1,200,000 to various aeronautical educational institutions for research and instruction. California and Massachusetts Institutes of Technology and Leland Stanford, Michigan and Washington Universities all got their wind tunnels from the Fund. After Richard Evelyn Byrd flew to the North Pole (1926) the Fund sent his plane around the U. S. to focus attention on the development of aircraft and the need for municipal airports. The Fund sent Col. Lindbergh and his plane to at least one city in each of the 48 States to increase popular interest in aviation. When the French Flyers Nungesser & Coli disappeared while crossing the Atlantic westward (1927) Daniel Guggenheim gave $25,000 for an expedition to locate them. Last December he gave the Chilean Government $500,000 to establish full aeronautical instruction.

A fortnight ago, for doing all these things for aviation he received the first "Spirit of St. Louis Aeronautical Medal," just established by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Fifth Worst Accident

Eleven passengers and two pilots serenely started from London to Zurich in the Imperial Airways two-engined biplane City of Ottawa last week. They had little to fear, for Imperial Airways had carried 99,000 persons for 3,800,000 miles and except for one bad accident at the very beginning of its operations, had killed or injured not one person. While flying over the English Channel, as the City of Ottawa had done 100 times before, one of her engines went wrong. The pilot at the controls turned the plane back toward England. Three miles from Dungeness she struck the water. The passengers were dashed to the floor. Heavy baggage in a rear compartment smashed through a thin partition and clumped upon the passengers. Struggling desperately, four passengers, the pilot and mechanic kicked and tore their way out of the fuselage. They went back in and tried to haul the baggage off the others. As they worked the seven drowned. It was the fifth worst accident in air history. Friends of flying faced it frankly, studied the details for lessons in the progressive art of air safety.

The world's four worst heavier-than-air accidents: December 1924, Imperial Airways plane, at Croydon, eight killed; January 1929, U. S. Army plane at Royalton, Pa., seven killed; December 1928, at Rio de Janiero, 14 killed; March 1929, Colonial Airways, sightseeing plane, at Newark, N. J., 14 killed.

Golf v. Flying

Golf and flying have long been associated in jokes, cartoons and actuality. Both require smooth open ground.

But a plane on a golf course can cut up more turf in one landing than the worst-player-in-the-club could consume in a whole season. Moreover, the way some flyers have of zooming foursomes, skimming clubhouses, using fairways and putting greens not only for emergency but for convenience, is distracting to golfers, costly to golf clubs, dangerous to terrestrial life.

That is why the Old Westbury Golf Club, one of many adjacent links which have made Roosevelt Field, L. I., popular among airmen, last week began to erect, at a cost of perhaps $500,000, a 125-ft. fence of stout steel mesh on its half-mile boundary nearest the airport.

Roosevelt Field officials, vexed by what they said would be a danger and a detriment to flying, talked determinedly about a court injunction.

Flights and Flyers

Spain to Where? With much mysterious circumstance. Commander Ramon Franco, Spanish flyer who three years ago flew from Spain to the Argentine over the South Atlantic, last week started to fly from Cartagena to New York over the North Atlantic. With him in his Dornier-Wal sea plane were three companions-- Julio Ruiz de Alda, who flew with Commander Franco in 1926; Eduardo Gonzales Gallarza, who flew from Spain to the Philippines; Pedro Madarigo, mechanic. Ostensibly they were to stop over at the Azores. But Commander Franco said that he had a "surprise'' for the world. Days passed and there was no accurate news of the flyers. A Portuguese boat wirelessed that it had heard a plane between Portugal and the Azores. An Azores despatch announced them floating between two islands of that island group. A British ship reported airplane wreckage some miles from the islands. A U. S. ship reported a flare from "apparently an airplane" 400 miles south of Cape Race, Newfoundland. Perhaps an attempt at a non-stop flight was Commander Franco's surprise. The Spanish Government finally decided that the plane and four men were lost. Nonetheless, ships continued their lookout.

Los Angeles-New York. Lee Shoenhair, flying solo in the B. F. Goodrich Co.'s wasp-motored Lockheed-Vega Silvertown, last week tried to rush from Los Angeles to New York faster than Frank M. Hawks & Oscar E. Grubb did with the Texas Co.'s Lockheed-Vega-Wasp early this year (Tins, Feb. 18). The Hawks-Grubb record was 18 hrs., 21 min., 59 sec. Pilot Shoenhair fought storms over the great plains, feared to cross the stormy Alleghenies where many a pilot has been killed, landed at Cleveland 13 hr., 20 min. after his start. He might have reached New York in 16 or 17 hours. After a wait at Cleveland he started again for New York. An Allegheny storm forced him down at Dubois, Pa. He started again, crashed. At the time Pilot Hawks was fixing to fly another Lockheed-Vega from Los Angeles to New York, with a stop at St. Louis. His intention was to try breaking both East and West transcontinental flying records this week by dashing from New York to Los Angeles, swiftly refueling there, returning to New York.

Daring Dixon

Flying with a mechanic and a passenger between Hartford and Willimantic, Conn, last week, Lieutenant Carl Dixon, Connecticut National Guard pilot, discovered a wheel loose and a strut broken on his landing gear. To land meant wreckage. What to do? He climbed to two thousand feet, gave the controls to the mechanic, who knew but little of piloting, broke a hole in the fuselage bottom, crawled through head first. Hanging by his feet he ingeniously used his belt, a piece of rope and a shoelace to lash the broken gear together. The repair sufficed to let him land safely at Hartford.

Hinkler Hailed

Of all the world's flyers who did enterprising work last year, the International Aeronautic Federation, meeting at Copenhagen last week, chose Bert Hinkler as having accomplished 1928's greatest aeronautical achievement. He flew alone from England to Australia in 15 days, 12 hrs. (TIME, March 5, 1928). His reward: a gold medal like the ones the Federation has awarded in prior years to Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Commander Francesco de Pinedo, Sir Alan J. Cobham.

*U. S. entries: Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co., Schroeder-Wentworth Associates of Glencoe, Ill., Charles Ward Hall of Buffalo, Heraclio Alfaro of Cleveland, J. S. McDonnell Jr. & Associates of Milwaukee, Brunner-Winkle Aircraft Corp. of Brooklyn. Foreign entries: De Havilland Co., Handley-Page Ltd., Vickers Ltd., Gloster Aircraft Co. and Cierva Autogiro, all of England; Societa Italiana Ernesto Breda of Milan.

/-Last week, his brother, Murry Guggenheim, announced that he would give $4,000,000 to establish free dental clinics for children in Manhattan.