Small Wonder

At Honolulu Airport one day last week, a tiny, single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza was rolled out onto the runway. Into it stepped lanky, 29-year-old William P. Odom, round-the-world speed champion (TIME, Aug. 18, 1947), dressed in a splashy tie, double-breasted suit and Homburg hat. Odom had managed to cram 300 gallons of gasoline into his red-and-silver monoplane, some in extra tanks on his wings and some in his cabin.

With a handful of chicken sandwiches, a Thermos jug of hot tea and some water beside him, Odom took off and headed east. Nine hundred miles away, he waved goodbye to a B-17 which had gone with him for company. Six hours later he waved hello to another which came out to escort him over San Francisco. Over Chicago, he failed to notice that a gas tank had gone dry, lost several thousand feet before he could get his stalled engine started from another tank. Over Pennsylvania, he plugged in an electric razor and shaved. Then he landed his plane at Teterboro (N.J.) Air Terminal, just 36 hours and 5,300 miles away from Honolulu. Average speed: 147 m.p.h. It was the longest nonstop flight ever made by a light plane (1,700 miles longer than Lindbergh's flight to Paris in 1927). Odom stepped out looking as spruce as any executive on his way to the office.

That was the way Odom and his employer, Wichita's Beech Aircraft Corp., wanted him to look. They wanted to impress U.S. executives with the reliability, range, and low operating costs of personal planes. Odom's fuel bill for the trip: $75.

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