Repeater

One day in 1912 a dashing young second lieutenant of infantry walked up to a flimsy-looking biplane at College Park, Md., surveyed it with something less than assurance. It had a 40-h.p. engine, two propellers in tandem. Lieut. Henry H. Arnold climbed in, took off, fought gusty air for 41 minutes, came down exhausted. For the Army's outstanding flight of the year he was awarded the brand new Mackay Trophy which Clarence Hungerford Mackay had just presented to the War Department as its No. 1 annual prize.

Since then the Mackay Trophy has been awarded to many a proud Army Airman. Col. Edward Vernon Rickenbacker won it in 1918 for bringing down 26 enemy aircraft. Lieut. John A. MacReady won it for an altitude record in 1921, Capt. Lowell H. Smith for the Army's Round- the-World Flight in 1924. In 1926 it went to Major "Jimmy" Doolittle for winning the Schneider Cup for the U. S. In 1927 Capts. Hegenberger & Maitland won it for their non-stop flight to Honolulu. Capt. Albert W. Stevens got it for his high-altitude photography in 1929, Air Corps Chief Benjamin Delahauf ("Benny") Foulois for his spectacular concentration of 600 planes into the Army "Airmada" of 1931.

Last week it went to a brigadier general who last summer commanded a fleet of ten 200-m.p.h. Martin bombers on an 8,000-mi. mass flight from Washington, D. C. to Fairbanks, Alaska and back. The grey-haired general, who heads the newly-organized Pacific Wing of the General Headquarters Air Force, had good cause to beam and remember a day at College Park 23 years ago, for his name was Henry H. Arnold.

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