Aeronautics: Biggests

While the biggest flying boat was stumbling on her way to the U. S. last week, the biggest amphibian went up for the first time and the biggest land plane came unhappily down.

The flying boat was the huge Dornier DO-X which took off from Rio de Janeiro for Miami as proudly as if she had not been nine months on the way from Switzerland. Her sponsors set a leisurely schedule of nine days for the northward flight, but a crankcase broke near Para, Brazil, and there the laggard sat down again to await a new motor from Natal.

The amphibian was the 45-seater Sikorsky 8-40, abuilding the past 20 months at Bridgeport, Conn, for Pan American Airways Inc. Her four 575-h. p. Hornet motors lifted her off the water after a run of only 16 sec.

The biggest land plane was Imperial Airways’ proud Hannibal, the 38-passenger biplane which went into service only a month ago. With 18 passengers, including four Americans, the ship had started from Croydon for Paris in a storm. Over Kent one of the upper propellers whirled itself to pieces, the fragments fell and disabled the engine below it, somehow put a third one out of commission. Pilot F. Dinsmore skilfully brought the crippled ship down into a meadow. No one was hurt, but the handsome plane with its luxurious cabin and cocktail bar was expensively smashed.*

How Parachutists Look

Many a groundling has wondered about the sensations of a parachute jumper, particularly in that awful, breathless moment when he drops from the plane, before the ‘chute billows open. Those sensations have often been described in words, now they have been described in photographs. Three months ago two Germans, Willi Ruge and one Boettcher, made their first jumps from separate planes at Staaken Airdrome, Berlin, each armed with a small, specially designed automatic camera to photograph the other’s descent and to take self-photographs during the jump. These pictures were printed six weeks ago in the Illustrated London News.

Hearst Editor Arthur Brisbane saw the pictures, wrote an editorial about them. Hearst’s Chicago Herald & Examiner took the cue, arranged to have Acting Corporal Garland E. Cain of Chanute Field, Rantoul, 111. make a similar set of pictures, using two cameras, one painted white so that Corporal Cain would know which to start on when the other was empty. Last week the Herex printed a full page of its pictures—excellent pictures, but not quite so good as the Germans’, possibly because Corporal Cain had to think about pulling the ripcord of his ‘chute, whereas the Germans merely jumped and let their ‘chutes open by means of ropes made fast to their planes.

Most startling picture was the one of

Corporal Cain the second before he stepped off the plane’s wing (see upper cut). But the open, straining mouth did not express terror or anguish; Corporal Cain was merely gasping in one last deep breath of rushing air before his plunge. Another view (see lower cut) showed what the parachutist sees as he looks down to select a landing spot.

Flights of the Week

Northeastern Passage. There was small need for public guesswork when a red Bellanca seaplane popped up in Greenland one day last week. Although everyone was astonished that a plane could fly there from Detroit unnoticed, the news that Parker (“Shorty”) Cramer was the pilot was a sure clue to the flight’s objective. Since immediately after the War. Pilot Cramer, onetime flying partner of Sir George Hubert Wilkins, had been arguing for a subarctic air route to Europe via Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark. Twice he attempted a trailblazer, twice failed: once with Pilot Bert Hassell in 1928; the following year in the Chicago Tribune’s Sikorsky amphibian ‘Untin’ Bowler, which was broken by floating ice and sunk in the Hudson Strait. “Shorty” Cramer continued to preach the feasibility of the route, finally aroused active interest of Thompson Aeronautical Corp. of Cleveland, operator of mail passenger and express routes in Michigan (Transamerican Airlines Corp., subsidiary).

President Edwin G. Thompson secured the scientific approval of Vilhjalmur Stefansson; the moral support of Second Assistant Postmaster General Warren Irving Glover; the co-operation of Canada; the advice of bankers Hayden Stone Co. Then he mapped a series of monthly experimental flights of which Cramer’s is the first. The implication was that if and when a two-day, two-night service is proved practicable, Thompson Aeronautical Corp. will be in line for a mail contract. (Estimated payload needed 18,000 letters at 50¢ each.)

Hardy Pilot Cramer, accompanied by Radioman Oliver Pacquette, was on his way more than a week before he was discovered. From Detroit he flew his Diesel-powered plane to Hudson Bay, Great Whale, Wakeham Bay; thence to Pang-nirtung, Baffin Island; across the Davis Strait and across the Greenland ice cap—a route never before negotiated by airplane to Iceland; dropped down to the sea with engine trouble, made repairs, flew on to the Faroe Islands; the Shetlands; again eluded observers.

Tough Mr-Mollison. A Gipsy-Moth biplane plunked sloppily down upon the gravel beach at Pevensey Bay, England, tipped up on end, flopped back on its haunches and rested. Out of the cockpit crawled a haggard Scotsman, one James A. Mollison, 25, to respond fully to the questions of an excited little crowd. Eight days and 21 hrs. prior he had left Australia, 10,000 mi. away. Every day he had forced his small plane along to the limit of his own endurance, sleeping an average of two hours each night. Night before he had taken off from Rome into a dirty sky, floundered through fog and storm over the Alps and landed three hours ago at Le Bourget—where he had to lean against his ship to keep from toppling before interviewers. Now he was in England two days ahead of the speed record set by his good friend Lieut. Charles W. A. Scott, Royal Air Force boxer (TIME, June 15) in the same type of plane. After a hurried luncheon at Pevensey, Pilot Mollison flew 45 mi. farther, to Croydon, almost mowed down a pet kangaroo brought to the airdrome by one of an admiring mob.

“Big Airplane Man/’ The Lindberghs continued their northering flight to the Orient, making the supposedly hazardous stretch from Baker Lake 1,115 mi-to Aklavik, extreme northwest Canada, with a precision that silenced alarmists. Bad weather bound the flyers for three days and two nights at Aklavik, where they were lionized by the 35 white residents and the hundred or so Eskimos (to whom Col. Lindbergh was “Big Airplane Man”). When the fog cleared along the Arctic coast the Lindberghs flew on to icebound Point Barrow, Alaska, to the indescribable delight of the residents who had received neither visitors nor mail nor supplies from “outside” for four months. Bad weather set in again. Meanwhile in the U. S. there was talk that the real purpose of the Lindberghs’ flight was to chart an international mail route such as was pictured several months ago by Second Assistant Postmaster General Glover upon his return from a visit in Canada. This was vehemently denied by Lindbergh, but it was recalled that his “pleasure jaunt” two years ago around the Caribbean shortly preceded the opening of new routes by Pan American Airways, Inc. with which he is associated.

Out of Bounds. When their attempt to beat the world-girdling record of Post & Gatty failed at Khabarovsk last fortnight (TIME, Aug. 10) wealthy young Hugh Herndon Jr. and hard-bitten Clyde Pangborn decided to slip down to Tokyo and try a nonstop flight to Seattle for $53.000 prize money. They thought to telegraph the U. S. Embassy in Tokyo for permission to fly over and land on Japanese soil, but neglected to wait for a reply before taking off. That was a grave mistake.

At Tachikawa Airport the flyers were met by a squad of police, headed by a highly indignant chief of foreign police. What did they mean by flying into Japan without permission? Well, they thought it would be all right. Would they please show on the map what route they had taken? Certainly. . . . Indignation rose to fury. They had flown over Tsugaru Strait, which is fortified; the naval post at Ominato; the concealed fortifications near Tokyo Bay. They had landed for a moment on the new airport at Haneda, not yet opened to traffic—all forbidden areas. And they had taken photographs? Hand them over!

Their plane was locked up and the flyers would have been locked up too, but for the intercession of Ambassador William Cameron Forbes. As it was, they were questioned four hours at the airport; four hours again the next day and nearly eight hours the day after that when their developed films showed views of fortifications. Both Herndon & Pangborn protested they had not recognized a fort if they saw one, but Japanese espionage laws are strict: They could be fined $1,500 or put in prison for three years. Civil officials, believing in the flyers’ innocence of intent, were all for. leniency. But the army openly favored a prison term. It appeared that the investigation might goon for many more days.

Pertinacious Honduran-Repeatedly balked from a New York-Honduras flight by his superior officers, by revolution, Captain Lisandro Garay of the Honduran Air Force last week at Floyd Bennett Field loaded a Bellanca monoplane with 360 gal. gasoline and Bert Acosta “to make a test flight.” Unseen Supercargo Acosta sneaked away; Captain Garay took off, headed for Tegucigalpa, reprimand, glory, or death.

-A broken propeller caused a trimotored Ford transport of American Airways, Inc. to crash last week just after taking off from Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport, killing both pilots, all four passengers.