Flights & Flyers

Quick Trip. With seven passengers and 900 lb. of mail, a Ford trimotor of National Air Transport rode a stiff tail wind from Chicago to New York one day last week, made the 20-hr. rail trip in 4 hr. 16 min. of flight. The plane was so early arriving in Cleveland (2 hr. 6 min.) the passengers were obliged to kill an hour before flying on to Newark Airport (2 hr. 10 min.).

Coyote. Flying low over a South Dakota prairie with a hunter as companion, Pilot Clyde Ice shot a coyote, landed, tossed the animal into the cockpit. As the plane flew on again the coyote revived, started fighting its captors. The ship spun crazily while Pilot Ice turned to help his friend. He ended the battle with a monkey-wrench -- favorite weapon of airmen for subduing rambunctious passengers and panic-stricken pupils.* Pilot Ice got back to his controls just in time to prevent a crash.

Guessers. In the Bellanca seaplane Tradewind, Lieut. William S. MacLaren, former U. S. N. pilot, and his pupil Widow Beryl Hart, 27, transport pilot, took off from New York last week for Bermuda, Azores, Paris. Instead of a radio the plane carried a small cargo of advertised foodstuffs for "the first payload flight to Europe." In "rocking" the plane off the still water the flyers knocked to the floor their sextant -- only navigating instrument aboard -- but instead of turning back they elected to guess their course. Navigator MacLaren guessed right at first, picked up two steamers about halfway; guessed wrong thereafter and turned back to safety at Norfolk, Va.

* Another favorite bludgeon is a fire-extinguisher, often applied to students who "freeze" the controls. According to a legend popular among airmen, Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd had to use similar tactics when he discovered that brain-fogged Pilot Bert Acosta was stubbornly steering a course "back to America" after they had reached the coast of France. Biographer Charles J. V. Murphy (Struggle: The Life of Commander Byrd) delicately pictures Acosta collapsing of his own accord, while Byrd stands reluctantly brandishing a flashlight as a bludgeon.

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