Flight & Flyers

Flights & Flyers

Sportsmen. In a 40-h.p. Klemm-Daimler sport monoplane, Pilot Wolfram Hirth and Sportsman Oscar Weller reached Iceland on their way from Berlin to Chicago via Greenland and Labrador. The 770-lb. plane carried no radio, but Pilot Hirth carried a cigaret holder made from the fibula of his amputated left leg. At Iceland the sea looked so wide, their ship so small, that flyers Hirth & Weller decided to go back home.

Blimping. Like a windstreamed globule of silver, the Goodyear-Zeppelin baby blimp Mayflower floated down upon the afterdeck of the liner Bremen as it approached New York harbor last week. Into the gondola stepped Goodyear President Paul Weeks Litchfield to be borne to Grand Central Air Terminal, thence to his Manhattan hotel, two hours ahead of other Bremen passengers. Since 1925 when the first was built, the Goodyear blimps (Pilgrim, Puritan, Volunteer, Mayflower, Vigilant, Defender) have advertised the company by flying about the country.

Tire Trouble. John Henry Mears, theatrical producer; racing globetrotter, took off from Roosevelt Field, N. Y., in a Lockheed monoplane to beat the Graf Zeppelin's round-the-world time of 21 days. With pilot Henry J. Brown and a terrier mascot he reached Harbor Grace, N. F., tried to take off before dawn on a bumpy field, cracked up when a tire blew out.

Endurers. At Roosevelt Field, N. Y., Robert Black and Louis Reichers landed in their 13th day of endurance flying, hinted that rivals had tampered with their fuel. At St. Louis, Forest O'Brine and Dale ("Red") Jackson, former record holders, approached their 400th hour in their attempt to beat the Hunter brothers' 558 hrs.

Derby. Pilot Lee Gehlbach, whose low-wing Command-Aire set the pace throughout most of the All-American Air Derby (TIME, Aug. 4) finished an easy winner at Detroit last week, took the $15,000 first prize. His elapsed time for the 5,541-mi. flight around the continent: 43 hr. 35 min. 30 sec. Lowell Bayless, flying a Gee-Bee biplane, came second, four hours slower; Charles Meyers in a Great Lakes, third. Eight of the original 18 starters were forced to abandon the race.

Scapedeath. At Camp Kearney, Calif, last week the plane of Lieut. Apollo Soucek, U. S. N., world's unofficial altitude champion (43,166 ft.), collided with another in midair. As Lieut. Soucek jumped, his parachute fouled the falling wreck. Frantically he jerked at the shrouds, pulled them clear barely 200 ft. above the ground, suffered only a sprained back.

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