• U.S.

Aeronautics: Flights & Flyers, Sep. 3, 1934

3 minute read
TIME

Hero, One of the Northwest’s great heroes is husky, hearty Frank Dorbandt. He has rushed serum to many a stricken Eskimo, carried antitoxin to many an ailing Indian, flown many a sick white to far-off hospitals. In 1930 he risked his life in an air search for his onetime flying mate, the late Carl Ben Eielson. In 1932 he made headlines by landing Father Bernard Hubbard inside the smoking volcano of Aniakchak. A longtime fur trader, Hero Dorbandt lately was accused by the Federal Government of smuggling pelts into the U. S. Last month in Seattle he was charged by a 19-year-old girl with being the father of her child. Last week Frank Dorbandt was in more trouble. Flying a sick boy from Point Barrow to Anchorage, Alaska, he landed at St. Johns, picked up some men who had been marooned there three weeks. When he reached Anchorage, carrying eleven passengers, a dog and 200 gal. of gasoline, a Department of Commerce inspector claimed his plane was overloaded by 2,000 lb., revoked his license, ordered his plane grounded. Incensed, Dorbandt climbed back into the plane, shouted: “You will never see me again!” Taking off with 2½-hr. fuel supply, he headed east into the fog over Prince William Sound. His friends, recalling the airplane suicide last year of a Jacksonville, Fla. widow (TIME, Dec. 4), gave him up for dead. Two days later Flyer Dorbandt suddenly returned to Anchorage, was promptly clapped into jail, was released next day under bond.

Navy’s No. 2. Airmen attached to Navy aircraft carriers do not always come home to roost. Fortnight ago Ensign James Hiram Kelsey Jr. of the U. S. S. Lexington was lost when his plane fell into the sea during maneuvres. Last week Lieut. John Scott Graff of the U. S. S. Saratoga crashed in the Atlantic 24 mi. off Virginia, quickly disappeared with his plane. Luckier was his companion, Chief Radioman R. K. Kelly, who fought his way clear, was picked up by destroyers.

Over Brooklyn. Longtime partners in a Manhattan chop-suey restaurant were Edmund On Wong and Fong Tru Shek. Inseparable, they prospered together, became air-minded, bought a joint interest in an Avro Avian biplane. Their ambition was to become Chinese Air Force pilots. Last week Student Pilots Wong & Fong decided to put on an aerial exhibition to welcome to the U. S. Chang Fa-kwei, China’s famed “Iron General.” Fong flew the Avian. Wong hired a tiny 2-cyl. Aeronca at Flushing Airport. Over Brooklyn’s people-packed Williamsburg district they flew in close formation, weaved back & forth, up & down. Then, in a flash, Wong zoomed up too close. Like a buzz saw, Fong’s propeller sheared off his plane’s tail, sent him whirling and whining 2,000 ft. to death on a tenement roof. Fong, his propeller shattered, glided two miles to a vacant lot in Queens, stubbed his landing gear in a ditch, turned over, broke his arm. In a Brooklyn morgue that day wept Wong’s white, U. S.-born wife.

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