Transport: Transatlantic Tradition

Clarence Chamberlin and Charles A. Levine became bitter enemies. Admiral Richard E. Byrd knocked out Bert Acosta with a flashlight as their plane circled over France. Joseph Marie Lebrix “sickened of being a valet” to Dieudonne Coste. Alexander Magyar challenged George Endres to a duel. To this tradition which dictates that men who have flown the North Atlantic together shall not long be friends, Crooner Harry Richman and Pilot Dick Merrill last week lived up with a bang.

“God, it was awful!” exploded Flyer Merrill to a reporter who found him not speaking to Flyer Richman as they labored to pull their monoplane out of a Newfoundland bog. “We had enough gas to get to Atlanta. Why did we land here in the marsh? Ask Mr. Richman! He’s the master mind here. . . .”

Explaining that he had dumped 500 gallons of gasoline during the flight, Flyer Richman snapped: “Five hundred miles off Newfoundland we met a gale head wind which nearly forced the plane into the sea. I believe we would have crashed and drowned had the gas not been dumped.”

Sneered Flyer Merrill: “I admit that the situation . . . was such as to scare an inexperienced flyer. . . . Safety required lower altitude, at which I immediately aimed. To my consternation Richman emptied a tank against my protest and wanted to send an S. O. S.”

Presently Eastern Air Lines’ General Manager Eddie Rickenbacker, who played godfather to the whole stunt, arrived with a rescue party, persuaded the two to stop bickering, fly on together. Flyer Merrill at once telegraphed New York: “There is positively no truth in the rumor that Harry and I have any differences. We are closer friends than any two men living.”