Schneider Squabble

Hot words shot about the conference room of the Federation Aeronautique International last week. Delegates from France and Italy glared across the meeting table at delegates from Great Britain. For a time it appeared that one nation or more might bolt the Federation. Reason: Great Britain had arbitrarily upped the entry fee per plane for the 1931 Schneider trophy races for seaplanes from 5,000 francs to 200,000 francs ($8,000). France and Italy challenged Britain's right to boost the rate, declared only the Federation had such power, refused to pay. Thereupon Great Britain ("host" for the next race by virtue of her victory last year) refused to recognize France and Italy as legal entrants. The British explained the high fee was to keep out publicity-seekers who might otherwise enter and default. A committee of arbitration was appointed by Federation Vice President Luis Ferrez of Spain.

Faster Airmail

Year and a half ago the Post Office Department designated Newark Municipal Airport as official eastern terminus for the transcontinental airmail. National Air Transport, operator of the New York-Cleveland-Chicago route, insisted the field was unfit for night landings of heavily loaded Douglas and Boeing ships, refused to move its base from Hadley Field, New Brunswick, N. J. While a three-cornered dispute was waged, New Yorkers continued to wait an extra 90 min. for airmail to be transported from distant Hadley Field to Manhattan's postoffices. Last week there was an air pageant of jubilation above Newark airport. The field had been so improved in the past 18 months that N. A. T. dropped its objection, moved its depot to Newark. Result: 30 min. delivery between postoffice and field. Two other airmail routes already converge at Newark: Colonial Air Transport (Boston) and Eastern Air Transport (Richmond, Atlanta, Miami).

Flights & Flyers

Bromley's Luck (cont.). In the fourth plane built for the purpose, Lieut. Harold Bromley & Navigator Harold Gatty finally took off last week from Samishiro Beach, Aomori Prefecture, Japan for a nonstop flight to Tacoma, Wash. Twenty-five hours later they were down again at Shiriyazaki, about 40 mi. from the starting point. Reports were meagre, but it was known that the City of Tacoma, an Emsco monoplane, had been in the thick of headwinds, rain and peasoup fog in its course over the Kuriles Islands. One despatch indicated that the plane was forced back by a broken exhaust pipe.

In the first half day the plane covered only 750 mi. of its projected 4500 mi. course. (It carried fuel for 50 hr.) For the next twelve hours, its radio dead, the Tacoma was "lost" until it unexpectedly appeared out of the gloom at Shiriyazaki.

Lieut. Bromley first undertook the Pacific venture as a Tacoma-Tokyo solo flight early last year. His first plane, a Lockheed, was wrecked at the takeoff. Two more crashed in testflights. With the Emsco, Lieut. Bromley abandoned the westbound route because of prevailing headwinds, sailed for Tokyo with plane and navigator last July.

Cosmic Effort. At the I. Riedinger Balloon Works in Augsburg, Germany, last week Professor Auguste Piccard kissed his wife & children, waved to a crowd of thousands, followed his assistant Charles Kipfer into the little globular gondola of the largest balloon ever built (150 ft. high). For this moment the mild-mannered, bespectacled Swiss physicist had been preparing for months. He would soar 10 mi. into the stratosphere, higher than man had ever flown, to study the cosmic rays believed to exist in interstellar space. Professor Piccard clamped shut the manhole that hermetically sealed the aluminum gondola, tested the oxygen equipment, signalled through a porthole to cast off. The great bag swayed in the wind, arose not one inch. Chagrinned but not disheartened, Professor Piccard guessed that 2,200 cubic metres of hydrogen in the bag was not enough. He would try again. Said he: "Had I thrown off ballast I could not have risen to the height desired. I therefore preferred not to start."*

Professor Piccard, who wrote his doctor's thesis at Zurich University under direction of Dr. Albert Einstein, made elaborate preparations for his ascension. Anticipating temperatures between 75DEG and 95DEG below zero in the stratosphere (above seven or eight mi.) he had painted one hemisphere of the gondola black, left the other shiny silver. By means of a rudder he planned to turn the black side toward the sun to absorb heat; the shiny side to reflect it in case the cabin became too warm. He and Kipfer (who never made an ascension) would have parachutes, as would the gondola itself, to safeguard the instruments and possibly the recorded findings.

Trinidad to Exuma. Four months ago Radioman Zeh Bouck, Navigator Lewis A. ("Lon") Yancey & Pilot Emil Burgin flew to Central & South America in the Stinson monoplane Pilot, first plane to fly to Bermuda (TIME, April 14). It was a "goodwill flight," traversing some 20,000 mi., much of it over hazardous mountains and jungle. Last week the flyers were on their way home from Port of Spain, Trinidad when a radiogram was received from Yancey: "Forced landing Exuma Island [Bahamas]. Turned over and burned plane. Complete loss. No one injured."

Major Edward Vernon Rickenbacker, onetime automobile racer, War ace (25 planes), executive of Fokker Aircraft Corp., walked in his sleep at his home in Riverdale-on-Hudson, fell 20 ft. from a balcony, "did something to his back."

*Balloonmen use sand ballast, dispose of it sparingly, generally by handfuls. Under some conditions the scattering of a few grains lightens the load enough to make the bag leap. Legend says that when Cinemactress Pearl White, taken aloft for a balloon scene in her famed Perils oj Pauline, spat her chewing gum overside, the balloon shot upward. A whole bag of ballast is never dropped except in emergency, e. g., to avoid striking a rooftop.

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