Flights & Flyers

White Thunder. From Horse Island, Newfoundland, two planes emerged last week, one with success, one with anticipated failure. After cracking up on the ice off Horse Island, Pilot Robert Fogg and his photographer had worked all night in the biting cold, improvising repairs, and raced home next day to Associated Press and Paramount News with first news pictures of the Viking disaster (TIME, March 23 and 30). From the other plane, a Sikorsky amphibian, ice-wise Bernt Balchen and two companions had scanned the floes in vain for a trace of Varick Frissell, the young Yale graduate who, with 25 others, was missing after the sealing ship exploded. Frissell's father, Dr. Lewis Fox Frissell of Manhattan, had sent them up --Balchen, F. Merion Cooper and Pilot Randy Enslow--because he was doggedly hopeful that his son was alive, and because Balchen is probably the ablest Arctic flyer alive. Said he: "Varick will come back all right. . . . He's been through that sort of thing before. I am optimistic, and I believe I have a right to be."

Dr. Frissell remained hopeful even after Balchen reported that the ice, whipped by a northwest wind, was moving steadily seaward. The father's reasoning was that his son would eventually be swept ashore where he could survive by his own resources. The very fact that others near young Frissell at the time of the explosion had lived to tell the tale was something for the father to cleave to. He went on hoping. . . .

Frissell, 27, had devoted his vacations to exploring little known parts of Newfoundland and Labrador even before entering Yale with the class of 1926. Last year, having raised $200,000, he took a party of actors aboard the Viking to make a sound-cinema called White Thunder of the sealing fleets. It was for additional shots to complete the scenario that he set out with Cameraman Arthur G. Penrod on the disastrous voyage last month.

Close Call, About five miles above New York City the engine of Elinor Smith's Bellanca began to sputter. She reached under the dashboard to turn a fuel valve. Instead, she must have loosened a connection of her oxygen breather. . . . Next thing that Elinor Smith saw was the Hempstead, L. I. reservoir only 2,000 ft. away, rushing up to meet her. She pulled her ship into a gliding angle, skimmed into a field, jammed on the brakes to avoid striking a tree. The plane nosed over. Rescuers rushed up to find the girl unhurt, walking about, crying hysterically. Such was the end of her attempt to regain the women's altitude record from Ruth Nichols, who soared to 28,743 ft. a few weeks ago (TIME, March 16). But calibration of her barograph may yet prove that Elinor Smith flew highest.

Goucher Girls, Goucher College (for girls) in Baltimore has a rule forbidding its students to fly to and from the city. Last week the authorities yielded to the coaxings of a dozen students, allowed them to fly home for Easter holiday in chartered planes. One ship took off for Newark. Two others headed for Pittsburgh. One of these, carrying five girls, got only 20 mi. west of Baltimore's Logan Field when low clouds turned it back. The pilot of the other Pittsburgh-bound ship, with three girls, lost his way in snow and sleet, was thrice forced down in the farmlands of Pennsylvania. Instead of a two-hour flight, the Goucher girls spent a long, cold day, arrived at Pittsburgh next morning by train.

Eleven Years, Most important boy in Connecticut's Rumsey Hall school last week was small Paul Vecker, 11, son of General Manager W. Paul Vecker of Compania Cubana de Electricidad. Unescorted, tugging at a heavy suitcase, small Paul went to Newark airport, boarded an Eastern Air Transport plane for Miami, there to change to Pan American Airways, to spend his Easter holidays with his parents in Cuba.

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