Flights & Flyers

Again, Soucek. Lieut. Apollo Soucek, Navy Flyer, at Anacostia field last week flew his Wasp-motored Wright Apache landplane to 43,166 ft, world record, surpassing Germany's Willi Neuenhoffen's 41,794 record. Exactly one year before Lieut. Soucek made the world seaplane record, 38.560 ft.

Invaders. At Vienna's Aspern Aerodrome last week an excited crowd cheered the daredevil aerobatics of Lieut. James Harold Doolittle and his "invading" team of U. S. airmen demonstrating Curtiss fighting craft (TIME, April 21). The Austrians cheered louder when their President, Wilhelm Miklas, stepped into a plane to be flown about by Capt. F. K. Cannon. Pilot Cannon essayed no stunts; landed his passenger gently, as befits a prospective buyer.* Doolittle's Circus, having shown their wares at Sofia, Belgrade, Bucharest, Istanbul, will push on to Prague, Berlin.

Lakehurst-Friedrichshafen. When the Graf Zeppelin saluted Manhattan's theatre crowds last fortnight in indefinite midnight farewell, it left in its airy wake the assurances of Dr. Hugo Eckener that regular trans-Atlantic service, by Zeppe lins as big as the Graf, will be a reality in September 1931. During his visit Dr. Eckener conferred with officials of Na tional City Bank, United Aircraft & Trans port Co., Union Carbide Co., Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp., all associated in the new International Zeppelin Transport Corp. With a showman's flair for secrecy, he would reveal only that the U. S. terminal would be "somewhere between Washington and Baltimore." Newsmen soon discovered that his representatives had been scrutinizing an air field at flat Hybla Valley in Virginia, ten miles south of Washington.

Numbering among its 22 passengers Sir George Hubert Wilkins, polar explorer, and Lady Wilkins, on a belated honeymoon, the Graf headed for home via Seville, was twice belabored by storms. North of Lyon, on the last day of the voyage, Dr. Eckener described the squalls as "a regular witches' cauldron."

*No U. S. presidents, save Herbert Hoover and Theodore Roosevelt (TIME, June 11, 1928), have flown. European heads-of-state are less wary. Frequent flyers among them: King Albert and Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians; Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald; the Prince of Wales and his brother, Prince George; King Carol of Rumania, King Alfonso of Spain, Prime Minister Tardieu, Benito Mussolini.

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