Double-Barreled Feat

Milton Reynolds is a shrewd salesman who will go to any lengths to publicize his ball-point pens. Last week, he went about as far as he could go--around the world, faster than anyone had ever gone before. As an advertising and promotional stunt, Milt Reynolds' record-breaking flight was well worth the $175,000 it cost. As a flying feat of luck and endurance, it was even more notable.

Last month, Reynolds decided to break Howard Hughes's round-the-world record of 91 hours, 14 minutes. He bought an A26 Douglas attack bomber, removed some 8,000 Ibs. of armor plate, crammed the plane full of gas tanks. He hired William P. Odom, a wartime transatlantic ferry pilot and China "Hump" flyer, to fly trie plane, and T. Carroll Sallee as engineer. Reynolds himself, who holds a private pilot's license, was "navigator," a euphemistic way of spelling passenger.

Working far better than Reynolds' pens, the Reynolds Bombshell took off from LaGuardia Field, stopped at Gander, then crossed the Atlantic in the record time of 5 hours and 16 minutes. It landed in Paris, roared on to Cairo and Karachi, with Reynolds passing out pens at all stops. The weather information was sketchy; at Calcutta the best an airport employee could tell them about prevailing winds came from an almanac.

At Tokyo, Reynolds grandiloquently announced that he was taking over the controls. But when the plane came into LaGuardia Field, Pilot Odom, red-eyed and dog-tired, was still in the pilot's seat. He had flown round the world in 78 hours and 55 minutes. More remarkable, the plane was forced to fly 20,000 miles, some 5,000 miles more than Hughes, because Reynolds had not been able to get permission to fly over Russia.

As they wearily climbed out of the plane, Pilot Odom said: "I'm going to sleep." Said Sallee: "I'm going to eat, sleep and get married." (He did.) Two days later, ads in Manhattan papers cried the real news: "Just arrived! 'Reynolds Bombshell' ball-point pens."

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