246 Hours

In 246 hr. (10-4 days) you can:

Paint a house and barn.

Read the Bible through.

Steam from the U. S. to Constantinople.

Learn to be a detective by correspondence.

Get a new car delivered.

Have your appendix out and recover.

Harvest, thresh and ship a wheat crop.

While other people were doing such things, Aviators Loren W. Mendell, 30, of Los Angeles and Roland B. Reinhart, 29, of Salem, Ore., listened for 246 hr., 43 min., 32 sec., to the steady roar of an old Wright Whirlwind motor, regulate 1 the controls of an old Buhl air sedan called the Angeleno, and soared, soared, soared over Southern California. When they had been up 175 hours, one hour longer than the last World's record (TIME, July 15), a great crowd gathered at the Culver City airport set up such a hullabaloo that "talkie" directors on nearby lots had to stop work. The soarers sent down messages announcing that they were "tough hombres," would stay up 300 hours.

Refuse which they had to drop out of the ship caught and accumulated on the tail, however. Came an hour when the Angeleno wabbled so badly she could not stay under her refueling plane (piloted by Paul Whittier, local millionaire). The "tough hombres" descended, went to a hospital, slept. When they awoke, bedside microphones were ready to let them talk to their public.

Rewards:

Congratulations from their backers, who included air-conscious William Gibbs Mc-Adoo, Wilsonian Secretary of the Treasury, owner of the airport and the Angeleno.

$1,000 each from Wright Aeronautical Co.

$500 each from a realty firm developing a tract near the airport.

A new Buhl sedan ($13,500).

Vaudeville contracts for $3,000 weekly apiece.

Fame.

Ocean Hoppers

Five groups of flyers were hopping across the North Atlantic almost at the same time last week.

U. S. Roger Quincy Williams, left-handed pilot, and Lewis Yancey, left- handed navigator, after a six-week wait and two accidents to their first plane, the Green Flash, flew a second Bellanca, one- Whirlwind-motored Pathfinder, unerringly from Old Orchard, Me., to Santander, Spain, where gas shortage had forced the Old Orchard-Paris Yellow Bird down three weeks prior (TIME, June 24). Gas shortage also arrested the Pathfinder's flight. Bound for Rome, she rose again and got there without another stop.

Premier, King and Pope received and praised the flyers.

Flyer Williams is president of Airvia Transportation Co. which is to begin New York-Boston passenger service this week, with Savoia-Marchetti flying boats.

U. S. Parker W. Cramer, Robert H.

Cast and Robert Wood, in the Sikorsky called 'Untin' Bowler, were at Port Burwell, Labrador, last week, trying to get away, detained by bad weather. Crushing ice damaged their anchored ship. A half-gale swept it to sea, a total loss.

Swedish. The Swedish plane Sverige reached Ivigtut on the east coast of Greenland. She had been held in Iceland for a month by engine trouble and bad weather (TIME, June 17).

Polish. In the Amiot biplane Mars-zclek Pilsndski (Marshal Pilsudski) Casimir Kubala and Leon Idzikowski took off from Paris for the U. S. Strong winds came up against them, forced them to battle to reach the Azores. In landing the plane overturned, exploded, fatally injured flyer Idzikowski.

French. Forty-five minutes after the Marszalek Pilsudski, Pilot Dieudonne Costes and Maurice Bellonte took off from the same field for the same destination. When they were over Tours a plane over-took them and dropped a motion picture film of their Paris departure. Encountering the same winds that defeated the Poles, Pilot Costes saw his speed reduced from 125 to 50 m.p.h. Realizing his fuel would not hold out against such odds he wheeled, flew back, landed near Paris.

Roping a Continent

A lot of things happened in South American aviation last week (see Map, p. 30): P: Pan-American Airways (U. S.) extended U. S. air mail service down the west coast from Mollendo, Peru, to Santiago, Chile, thus completing the longest U. S. air mail route--Cristobal, Panama Canal Zone, to Santiago, 3,900 mi. Scheduled travel time from New York to Santiago is 8 days, against 21 days by boat. Postage per half-ounce is 70-c- from any point in the U.S.*

P: SCADTA (Colombian-German) received Chilean permission to extend its lines from Colombia to Arica, Chile. Thus SCADTA will parallel part of the Pan-American west coast route.

P: American International Airways (U. S.) sent its flagplane Southern Star down the west coast from Panama to Santiago, demonstrating to Latin-Americans that an-other U. S. line might compete in that territory.

P: Pan-American Airways sent a survey plane from San Juan, Porto Rico, to Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana (on South America's north coast), by way of Guadeloupe (French possession), Martinique (French possession), Georgetown (British Guiana). That is the mail route which U. S. Assistant Postmaster General Warren Irving Glover last week authorized to go into operation next month.

P: Pan-American Airway's man, Gene Summers, was at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, contending with Brazil's Secretary of Public Works Victor Konder for Brazilian air mail contracts, which would profit Pan- American when it extends its lines down around the east coast to Buenos Aires.

P: President Ralph A. O'Neill of New York, Rio & Buenos Aires Line was also in Rio, contending with Secretary Konder for the same contracts. President O'Neill had stopped there on a flight from San Juan to Buenos Aires surveying for the east coast air line he proposes to develop.

P: Curtiss-Wright Corp.'s man, Dee Tobin, was a third U. S. entrepreneur at Rio con tending for the same contracts.

It was a race to rope in the entire South American continent with air lines. To the winners (for no one of the five major con tenders is likely to gain monopoly in any one region) great profits are in store. There is mail to be carried and the governments as a matter of public policy pay handsomely.* Although none of the lines expect to carry much bulky express for years to come, there are precious diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, egret feathers and in districts where businessmen distrust checks, cash to be carried.

The greatest profits are expected from passenger transport over the tedious distances between U. S. and South American business centres. It still takes weeks to travel between the two continents by watership. Buenos Aires is 18 days from New York, Valparaiso 21 days. Distance has retarded U. S. exploitation and participation in Latin-American enterprises more than have differences in culture and language. National City and Chase National banks of Manhattan have already ventured into South America extensively. Officials of such banks and of industries with similar foreign enterprise will, the aviation companies confidently expect, travel often to South America so soon as transportation is swift, safe. Such travelers will willingly pay high, profitable fares. Then it may be that great cities will grow in the South American interior, a region of potentially vast fruitfulness. Then the border cities will become metropolitan terminals instead of the way-stations on coastal air routes that they now are.

One U. S. airman is becoming mighty in South American aviation, and another is promising to become so. They are Juan Terry Trippe and Ralph A. O'Neill, presidents respectively of Pan-American Airways and New York, Rio & Buenos Aires Lines. Both are in their middle 30's, both intend to tie a line of transports around the continent. Mr. Trippe last week was well on his way, Mr. O'Neill just starting.

In their competitive plans they are not without competition from others. On the east coast there are the long and well fixed Condor Air Lines and the Campagnie Generate Aeropostale. Condor is German-owned, a subsidiary of the German-subsidized Luft Hansa, strongest aviation concern of Middle Europe if not of all Europe. Condor does a good mail and passenger service between Asuncion, Para guay, Buenos Aires and Para, Brazil. Competing is Aeropostale, French-subsidized. Its main purpose is to rush mail from Buenos Aires to Natal, Brazil, whence fast ships rush the sacks across the Atlantic to Dakar, Senegal, for retransfer to France-bound planes.

On the north coast is Sociedad Colombo Alemana de Transposes Aereos, commonly called SCADTA. Head of SCADTA is redoubtable Dr. Peter P. von Bauer, an Austrian who has become a Colombian citizen. He is the aeronautical yes-no man of the country. Whoever wishes to touch Colombia with aviation lines must man fully deal with him. Pan-American traded rights with him in order to complete its Caribbean line from Panama to Port of Spain, Trinidad. He demanded and received the right to run SCADTA planes from Barranquilla, Colombia, to Panama.

In the interior of the west coast, two lines are operating. The more important is Lloyd Aereo Boliviano, a German-owned concern which carries passengers over the rough Bolivia plateau. The other is Faucett Aviation Co., headed by Elmer J. Faucett of the U. S., who has settled in Peru. U. S. businessmen who are forced to enter the Peruvian interior hire Faucett taxi-planes. He portages them over mountains three miles high.

Along the west coast competition is zero for Pan-American, stupendous for anyone else. Manhattan's Joseph Peter Grace and William Russell Grace, brothers, are the commercial tsars. They control ships (Grace Line), trading companies (chiefly for heavy machinery), banks. Peruvians respect and follow their courteously covered commands. Other west coast nationals do likewise, from Ecuador to Chile.

Because of the Grace prestige and influence, Pan-American, when it decided to go down the coast, dealt directly with the two Graces. They organized Pan-American Grace Airways, on a half-and-half basis.

The flight which President John K. Montgomery of American International Airways made down the west coast last week was a gesture of defiance, a threat against the Pan-American half of the combination. He does rot like the Pan-American "crowd." A onetime U. S. Navy and Army flying officer, he once was a member of Pan-American. Came disagreements, disputes, arguments, fights, and he was out.

If and when he forms a west coast line, it will probably join at once with the New York, Rio & Buenos Aires Line which Ralph A. O'Neill is shoving through along the east coast. The same U. S. money is back of both men.

President Ralph A. O'Neill's assets are a sympathetic personality which Latin-Americans would go far to please, a War flying career, the organization of the present Mexican air force, a hard business head, an adeptness in Latin-American politico-commercial intrigue.

The O'Neill-Momgomery projects stir little trepidation in President Juan Terry Trippe of Pan-American Airways. He too is simpatico and hardheaded. He has at heart and hand a transportation system which he projected and built himself.

It was after the War that he really started on his plan. He went into plane and motor factories to learn their trade. He initiated himself with mail contracts by getting the first private one which the Government granted--between New York and Boston.

With potent finance he was in close touch through Hill School and Yale friends. So as an operating executive he was well qualified when, one year ago. Aviation Corp. of the Americas bought Pan-American Airways, to make his project actual. During the past year he has opened passenger lines from Miami to Nassau, to Cuba and the West Indies as far as Porto Rico (a tourist route), to Central America via Brownsville, Tex. and Mexico City.

His mail planes loop around the Gulf of Mexico and, since last week, shoot down to Chile. Soon he expects them to fly from Panama to Trinidad Island, then to Porto Rico. Then he will have a Gordian knot around the Caribbean Sea which any competitor will have great difficulty to hack apart.

The extension of his project would seem fantastic in one less able. It is no less than to throw his lines entirely around South America, splicing them near the continent's bottom by a lacet between Buenos Aires. Then his Caribbean knot will be a handle to the bucket that he expects to make of South American air transportation.

*Air mail to Latin-American countries should be labeled "par avian--by air mail."

*On the 3,900-mile Panama-Santiago route, the U. S. pays Pan-American Airways practically $2 per mile; not enough to cover flying operations, but enough for a sound operating back-log.