Victims & Winners

During the qualifying tests for a limited-displacement race, Pilot Lee Miles was doing about 200 m. p. h. 50 yd. from the ground. Suddenly his wing folded. Hurtling end over end, the fuselage pitched in a long arc into a clump of trees. When witnesses got there, Pilot Miles, who was officially declared the U. S. racing champion of 1934, was dead.

There were other hair-raising occurrences at the 17th annual National Air Races at Cleveland last week, but more newsworthy and of more practical value to aviation were two great races--the one named after Manufacturer Vincent Bendix, a transcontinental race, and the one named for Manufacturer Charles E. Thompson, a closed-course race around pylons at the air meet grounds.

In the Bendix, gaudy, onetime Winner Roscoe Turner was eliminated before the start when his ship caught fire on the ground at Los Angeles. For a time the lead was held by Jacqueline Cochran Odlum, wife of investment trust Tycoon Floyd B. Odlum, only woman entered. She reached Cleveland in third place, won $3,000 plus $2,500 offered to the first woman to finish. The $5,000 second prize went to Earl Ortman of Los Angeles, who nearly lost consciousness for lack of oxygen when he mounted to 22,000 ft. over Kansas to avoid a storm. Winner was wealthy Sportsman Frank William Fuller of San Francisco, who--with the possible exception of Mrs. Odlum--had less need of money prizes than any other flyer entered.

Flying a stripped-down, hump-backed Seversky pursuit plane powered by a Twin Wasp Jr. engine, Fuller was first to reach Cleveland, continued on non-stop to Bendix, N. J., the famed old airport of Teterboro where Vincent Bendix now has headquarters. For this Pilot Fuller won $13,000. His cross-country time was 9 hr. 44 min. 43 sec., fastest in Bendix history but below the 7 hr. 28 min. 25 sec. record held by wealthy Sportsman Howard Hughes. Deafened and groggy, Winner Fuller called for a bottle of soda pop, repaired to a Coney Island hotel. A thick man in his late thirties, Frank Fuller is secretary-treasurer of San Francisco's W. P. Fuller & Co. (paint), founded by his grandfather. He does not spend much time in his office. His wife, brother, sister and cousin are all flyers, and the Fuller planes take up half of a hangar at Mills Field. Californians generally call them "the flying Fullers."

P:. Winner by a split second in the closest finish in Thompson Race history was Pilot Rudy A. Kling in a mosquito-nosed, Menasco-motored Folkerts monoplane which just nosed out Earl Ortman's Keith Rider at an average of 256.9 m.p.h. This was seven miles slower than Michel Detroyat's world record winning time last year, but fast enough to take the $9,000 first-prize money. A wiry garage mechanic and veteran racer who designs his own planes, 29-year-old Rudy Kling lives in Lemont, Ill., had already walked off with the $4,500 first prize in the Greve Trophy race. Grinned he: "I just gunned her for all she could do."

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