Flights & Flyers

Again, Hawks. Capt. Frank Monroe Hawks in New York one morning last week had, for something to talk about, an engagement to play golf with his father in Los Angeles at 4 p.m. that afternoon. He left Curtiss Airport, Valley Stream, L. I. at 6 a.m. (Eastern daylight-saving time). Grinning, he greeted his father at Los Angeles Municipal Airport at 4:50:43 p.m. (Pacific standard time), too weary for golf but with a new east-west transcontinental record. It was the first such flight ever made in full daylight. The plane was the Travel Air Mystery S, low-wing monoplane, powered with a supercharged Wright Whirlwind engine (TIME, Feb. 24). Elapsed time, including fuel stops at Columbus, St. Louis, Wichita, Albuquerque, and Kingman was 14 hr. 50 min. 43 sec.--faster by 3 hr. 52 min. than the record set three months ago by Lieut.-Colonel Roscoe Turner. Average flying time was 179 m.p.h., sometimes as high as 240. Pilot Hawks complained of headwinds over most of the course, varying between 20 and 30 m.p.h. He prepared to attack the west-east record of 14 hr. 45 min. set last Easter by Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh with Mrs. Lindbergh.

Indoor Hop. When Inventor Maitland Barkelew Bleecker brought forth the helicopter on which he had been working for four years with Curtiss engineers (TIME, June 30) a fault in the lubricating system prevented flight tests. Last week changes had been completed, but conditions were not yet right for outdoor flying. Impatient, youthful Inventor Bleecker tied a rope to the keel of the little machine inside its hangar at Valley Stream, Long Island. Then he started the motor, entered the cockpit, gently opened the throttle. The craft rose vertically from the hangar floor, hovered under the roof at the end of its tether, settled lightly to the floor again.

Magic Carpet. The Ryan monoplane Magic Carpet, flying through wind and rain over Chicago, disappeared into a thundercloud, tumbled out of it in a crazy spin, crashed through the top of a steel gas tank, plunged into 40 ft. of water at the bottom, killed Pilot Orville Suchy and two joyride girl passengers. European Derby. Pilot Fritz Morzik of Germany, who last year won the International Around-Europe Reliability Tour for light planes, was last week declared winner of this year's 4,750-mi. derby.

Some of the 60 contestants (British. French, Spanish, Polish, one U. S.) voiced objection to the method of scoring, claimed undue weight was placed upon finicky technical tests. Britain's Capt. Hubert S. Broad finished the tour first, but was relegated to eighth place.

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