Flights & Flyers

Again Costes. Round and round a giant's circle, droning on through the Provence mistral with a log of slowly waning fuel and gradually mounting flying time, last week went the Question Mark, red-painted French Breguet airplane, in search of a new endurance record. Piloted by Dieudonne ("Doudou") Costes and his companion Paul Codos, it made its way over flat-roofed, smelly Marseilles, to time-broken Avignon, to musty Narbonne, and then over the same route again. For 52 hours and 34 minutes the Breguet's motor snorted along. Then with a last puff and snort, the ship touched ground gently at her starting point, Istres Aerodrome near Marseilles. For 8,026 kilometres (4,987 miles) Costes & Codos had ridden a closed circuit with one load of fuel. The pleased French Government gave them an $8,000 bonus for breaking the closed-course record, which Ferrarin and Del Prete (Italians) held with 4763.7 miles.

This flight perhaps made Costes flyer-of-the-year. Three months ago he set another world-record, for airplane distance, with Maurice Bellonte from Paris to Tsitsihar, Manchuria, an airline of 4,910 miles made in the same ship with a more powerful motor (TIME, Oct. 14).

The formidable Costes record: shot down 13 enemy fighters during the War; served conspicuously in other air branches --artillery fire regulation, reconnoitering, day & night bombardment; given the Legion of Honor after his sixth plane victory; made an officer of the Legion and voted the U. S. Distinguished Flying Cross (with Joseph Lebrix) in 1928 for a globe-circling adventure which took them from Paris to St. Louis (Africa), to Port Natal (Brazil), all over South America, thence to New Orleans, Washington, San Francisco, then by boat to Tokyo, by air to China, Indo-China, Calcutta, Karachi, Aleppo, Syria, Athens, Marseilles and home to Paris. On his recent flight home from Tsitsihar with Bellonte, Costes went by way of French Indo-China and broke his own record from Hanoi to Paris (4 days, 18 hours) by seven hours. He is now associated with Louis-Charles Breguet, designer-manufacturer.

Spanish Caviller. In a glary Madrid barroom last week a chunky military figure cavilled and carped to. a huddle of tongue-tchicking, eye-rolling friends, in this tenor: He, Major Ramon Franco, flying conqueror of the South Atlantic, the adulated of two continents, the medaled, was being hounded by his Government. The published cause was his refusal, for the sake of his life and those of his flying companions, to use an all-Spanish plane on his ill-fated attempt to fly the South Atlantic again last summer. That excuse manifestly was false. Had not the Dictator of Spain, Primo de Rivera himself, wept when he and his crew were rescued from the ocean near the Azores and returned to Spain? Had not the populace made holiday in their saved honor? No! Like that great U. S. brigadier general and aviator, William Mitchell, he was being persecuted for telling his countrymen how inept in aviation were their military. Consider his degradations--transferred from the air service to the infantry, forced to take a furlough without salary, his book on Spanish aviation suppressed, and not permitted to leave Spain for a paying South American flying job! This was enough to make a desperado of a man, to make him a revolutionary! . . . Whereupon police, who had been listening, courteously hustled cavilling Major Franco and his huddle to jail for overnight detention.

Italian Imprecator. In April 1927, Col. Francesco de Pinedo, Italian sea-hopper, was basking in Arizona sunshine while mechanics gassed his seaplane, the Santa Maria, which floated on the waters back of the Roosevelt Dam. He had flown her from Italy to South America, to the U. S. and, with Latin warmth, boasted himself the "Conqueror of the Air." Mechanics spilled the usual careless amount of gasoline on the dam water. Then some Mexican handyman lit his skinny, hand-rolled cigaret and tossed the match into the water. Up went the Santa Maria in a storm of smoke and flame. Mussolini shipped de Pinedo a similar plane which the flyer flew from Manhattan to near the Azores. A passing ship hauled him to safe land.

Meanwhile, in Italy, the public raised a half-million lire (about $26,000) to buy de Pinedo another plane. This fund, never used, was lodged in a bank. De Pinedo quietly accepted the interest, about $20 a week, for his own purposes.

Time went by. De Pinedo was made a General, Chief of Staff for Italian Aviation, ranked only by magniloquent General Italo Balbo, then Under-Secretary, now Minister of Aviation. Some months ago Balbo and de Pinedo made a trip to the eastern Mediterranean and Russia. The people huzzaed and feted de Pinedo. Balbo, of whom no one had heard much, stood in the background perforce, biting his fingernails. The Minister of Aviation scolded his high subordinate for bumptiousness.

Recriminations . . . imprecations. . . . In de Pinedo, Balbo saw his Carthage who must be destroyed. For bludgeon there was the subscription interest scandal. Mussolini heard the tale, telephoned de Pinedo: "Your resignation as Chief of Staff for Aviation is accepted." Hence last week in sultry Buenos Aires a sourly, meek de Pinedo began doing time as Italian air attache to the Argentine.

Washington Crash. For a pre-Christmas surprise to friends and family, three men planned a flight from Washington, D. C., to Massachusetts--Representative William Kirk Kaynor, who had never flown before, to visit his family; Stanley B. Lowe, his secretary, to get first sight of his newborn child; Arthur A. McGill, a friend, to remarry. Assistant Secretary of War Frederick Trubee Davison loaned them the trimotored Fokker which he always used himself. Pilot was Capt. Harry A. Dinger, "who had more experience in piloting trimotored transports than any other pilot in the Army Air Corps." Mechanic was Buck Private Vladimir Kuzma. Capt. Dinger took his party up from Boiling Field. At 300 ft., for causes which none could interpret, the plane veered, dove, crashed. All died. Mrs. Kaynor was out buying Christmas presents for her six children when she heard Springfield newsboys crying her husband's end.

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