Flights & Flyers

Lahm Prize. Almost forgotten in the U. S. is Frank S. Lahm, 83, first U. S. citizen to take up ballooning as a sport, first person to give a full account of what Wilbur and Orville Wright accomplished, great protagonist of the Wrights in France. But in France where the elder Lahm has lived in retirement since the War, he is less a recollection. Each year he gives 30,000 francs ($1,175) for the most interesting accomplishment in aviation. Last week he gave the money to Juan de la Cierva, who invented the autogiro (flying machine with vanes whirling horizontally to give the effect of fixed wings) and who flew it recently across the English Channel.

Last fortnight the French Academy of Sport gave Inventor de la Cierva its grand prize for 1928. Last fortnight, also, the French Flyer Massot flew an autogiro from Paris to Troyes, 86 miles, in one hour.

Trans-Hemisphere Transport. For two years European nations have been sending flyers to scout airways across Africa, across Asia. Last week England utilized its amassed information. Its Imperial Airways started weekly commercial service from Croydon Airport, near London, to Karachi, India, by way of Alexandria, Egypt. First passenger was Sir Samuel Hoare, British Air Minister, one of the few bureaucrats who actually fly.* He quit the India journey at Alexandria, to inspect the Egyptian section of the proposed Alexandria-Cape Town British trunk airway.

Publisher Black. For the first time in several years of flying, Baltimore's Publisher Van Lear Black last week had a "mishap." While flying over the French-Italian boundary, near Monte Carlo, on the return from his Croydon-Cape Town round trip, one of his three motors broke into pieces. His pilot made a safe landing.

*Clarence Marshall Young, director of aeronautics, U. S. Department of Commerce, returned from Europe last week where he has been flying his own plane while inspecting European air services. France's late Minister of Commerce and Aeronautics, Maurice Bokanowski, was killed last year while flying.