Flights & Flyers

American Boy. A flight from New York to Los Angeles, begun on Monday and completed Sunday, is not in itself remarkable. But if the flyer be the young son of a crack airman who met spectacular death; and if the boy seeks a "junior speed record," public fancy is captured. Last week Frank Goldsborough, 19, son of the late Brice Goldsborough,* crossed the U. S. in 34 hr. 3 min. flying time, in a biplane named American Boy. Previous "record" of 48 hr., set last year by 18-year-old Richard James, was spread over a month elapsed time. Young Goldsborough's flight was punctuated by forced landings. Overtaken by darkness near El Paso, he settled down on the desert beside a truck. "Two prospectors were in it. They treated me royally, shared their food and water with me. . . . In taking off next morning along a narrow road lined by telegraph poles, I had a cross wind and just clipped the lower left wing tip, but I got into the air safely."

No Barograph, No Record. From the sheer cliffs bordering Point Loma, Calif, last week youthful Glider-Pilot Jack Barstow in a Bowlus sailplane was launched over the Pacific's edge. All that day and most of that night he soared over land and water, sometimes in cold wind and rain, conversing occasionally through the darkness with his friends below. When he landed, at the end of 15 hr. 13 min. he had shattered every existing endurance record for gliding* and yet, officially, had made no flight. Reason: he had taken along no barograph to register in ink, on a clock-controlled drum, the fact that his craft was in flight for the time elapsed. Later, properly equipped with a barograph, Barstow took off again. After soaring eight hours, a gust of wind caught his sailplane, dashed it to the bottom of a canyon. His injuries will confine him to bed for two months.

Ladies' Endurance. Mile Lena Bernstein, 24, Russian emigree, took off from La Bourget airport on Thursday morning, descended Friday evening with a new ladies' endurance record of 35 hr. 46 min. 55 sec. sustained flight, surpassing by nearly ten hours the previous record (26 hr. 21 min. 32 sec. by Elinor Smith), falling 2 hr. 14 min. short of the men's record (last October; Vern Speich at Long Beach, Calif.).

Mantrap. Crowds at a Duesseldorf airport last week cheered while Daredevil Willie Hundertmark stood up in his plane, seized and clung to a rope ladder suspended from a second plane flying above him. Intermittently, for a half-hour, they continued to cheer while, with Daredevil still dangling from the bottom rung, the plane swooped and circled low. Then with horror they saw that the acrobat was tangled in the ladder, was too exhausted to free himself. Rescuers tried to snatch the swinging body but it was tangled too badly. The plane had to land. Daredevil Willie Hundertmark was dragged to death.

Cured. On the theory that shock sometimes relieves deafness, one D. Allen Dittman of Waynesburg, Pa. went aloft over Bettis Airport, Pittsburgh, last week with Pilot Chester Pickup. At 10,000 ft. Pilot Pickup put his plane into a power dive. At 7,000 ft. the terrific pressure shattered the windshield, the glass cutting Pickup's face, momentarily stunning him. Unable to regain control, Pickup motioned Dittman to jump with him. Dittman, whose 'chute failed to open until he had dropped to 1,000 ft., landed on the roof of an open hearth furnace of Carnegie Steel Co., directly alongside the wreckage of the plane. Questioned by mill police, Dittman heard.

*Brice Goldsborough, expert of Pioneer Instrument Co., was navigator on Mrs. Frances Grayson's amphibian Dawn which was lost between New York and Newfoundland at the start of a trans-Atlantic flight (TIME, Jan. 2, 1928.)

*Official world record, 14 hr. 25 min. by Ferdinand Schulz, Germany, 1928; official U. S. record, 9 hr. 5 min. 32 sec., Hawley Bowlus, Point Loma, March, 1930; previous unofficial world record, 14 hr. 45 min., Lieut. Dinort, Germany, 1929.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.