Los Angeles to Lakehurst

The Graf Zeppelin, Dr. Hugo Eckener commanding, completed her world flight at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station last week. The distance traveled: some 19,000 miles. Time: 21 days, 7 hours.*

P: Only nine passengers made the full Lakehurst-Lakehurst round trip. They were Karl von Wiegand (Hearst correspondent), Sir George Hubert Wilkins (Hearst correspondent), Lady Grace Drummond lay (Hearst correspondent), Robert Hartman (Hearst photographer), Lieut.-Commander Charles Emery Rosendahl (Hearst guest, U. S. Naval observer), Lieut. Jack C. Richardson (U. S. Naval observer), William B. Leeds (rich playboy), Joachim Rickard (correspondent for Spanish newpapers), Heinz von Eschwege-Lichbert (German journalist).

P: At the takeoff from Mines Field, Los Angeles, among the celebrities present were Publisher William Randolph Hearst, whose $200,000 for exclusive reporting rights made the world flight possible at this time, and pert Cinemactress Marion Davies, Hearst friend. A radio announcer saw them together and to the listening world exclaimed: "Here's Hearst, big publisher-backer of this epochal flight. And who's with him? None other than dainty Miss Davies. Won't you speak a few words, Miss Davies?" Miss Davies, somewhat tremulously, complied. The announcer then called on Mr. Hearst. He refused.

P: The Los Angeles takeoff was lubberly. The Graf Zeppelin scraped her tail on high tension wires close to Mines Field. Damage was slight and she proceeded slowly eastward over the Continental Divide, with a graceful swerve over Mexico. Bull-throated El Paso had opportunity to hail her. Over Texas, presumably, someone shot a bullet into her hull, causing no damage. Down into Kansas City peered the German passengers looking for cowboys.

P: Chicago, which ached so for the ship's sight that her rathaeusers telegraphed Commander Eckener that the trip could not be a success unless the Graf Zeppelin visited the second U. S. city, climbed porches, poles and pinnacles. Photographers Robert Hartman and Baron von Perckhammer aboard the ship "nearly went crazy trying to do photographic justice to the scene." Then to Detroit she went, where lay the new little all-metal dirigible (TIME, Sept. 2). Dr. Eckener stopped eating caviar & bread to exclaim: "I never saw such tremendous cities as there are in America." A breath of Canadian air, and then came Cleveland at midnight.

There, snubbed to a mooring mast for the air races was the Los Angeles. "Wild Indians could hardly have made more noise than Commander Rosendahl and Lieut. Jack Richardson at the familiar sight," gurgled Lady Drummond Hay through her typewriter. Next were the Akron hills with the Goodyear-Zeppelin dirigible hangar mounting tremendously toward completion. No trouble was there getting to Manhattan and Lakehurst, and much joy. First to alight was Lieut. Richardson, who jumped to hug his wife and child. Other passengers rushed variously for bath and bed. Said Playboy Leeds: "I never saw the world, but only four bathtubs. . . . Please let me hustle along to that warm bath."

P: Greeting Commander Eckener with a praising message from President Hoover was retiring Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, William Patterson MacCracken. Mr. MacCracken with Rear Admiral William Adger Moffett, chief of the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, and Dr. Otto Carl Kiep, counselor of the German Embassy, took Dr. Eckener by plane to Washington to exchange respects with President Hoover and Cabinet officers. As soon as courtesy visits could be paid. Dr. Eckener rushed by motor to Dr. Kiep's home where gemutlich he snuggled into a featherbed and slept from twilight to dawn, his first careless sleep in three weeks.

Next day he flew back to Lakehurst, the sacks under his eyes less baggy. Train took him to New York where the city gave him a hero procession. Over it sailed a laugh at the smart community, an airship hailed as the Graf Zeppelin. It was the Los Angeles, returned unexpectedly from Cleveland. The Graf Zeppelin stayed at Lakehurst having its Los Angeles damage repaired and being refueled and reinflated for its last leg home to Friedrichshafen.

P: Passengers to Germany numbered 17. With them went plenty of food, 12 quarts of Philadelphia whiskey, six quarts of Philadelphia brandy, freight, letters including one on Edgar Allan Poe's 1844 newspaper hoax that a flying machine had crossed the Atlantic in three days. The Hearst people remained behind. Mr. von Wiegand rested. Lady Drummond-Hay cuddled to her parents, Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Thomas Leftbridge, who had just reached Manhattan from London. They found her "two shades darker than she was before she started . . . handsomer than ever." Sir George Hubert Wilkins hurried to Cleveland and shyly married Suzanne Bennett, actress, in a justice of the peace's dingy back office.

Remained behind, too, Dr. Eckener, to talk business with the Goodyear-Zeppelin people, to raise money for freight-carrying Zeppelins soon to be abuilding at Friedrichshafen and operating across the oceans.

Commander of the Graf Zeppelin on her home jaunt was small, saturnine Capt. Ernst A. Lehmann, 42, Assistant Director of the Zeppelin works and easily Dr. Ecke-ner's peer in airship navigation. He was a naval architect on the late Count Ferdinand Zeppelin's staff and was operating a Zeppelin, the Sachsen, when the War broke out. Perforce he became a raider, bombed Antwerp once, London twice. In his book The Zeppelins, he reports, without boast or apology, that he could have destroyed London were that the German desire. He invented the device of concealing dirigible raiders by lowering a pilot in a steel basket on 1,000 feet or more of cable through a cloud bank, with binoculars and telephone to give bearings, observe bomb damage. He says the Kaiser ordered him to avoid hitting King Albert of Belgium, King George of England, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral or London's residential districts. He has commanded almost 100 dirigibles. For three years (1925-27), he worked for the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. at Akron, learned English, decided to take out U. S. citizenship papers, changed his mind temporarily. He will settle, he thinks, wherever manufacture and operation of dirigibles promise him the best fortune.

Flying Dutchman?

Wallowing toward Savannah, Ga., from Germany, the steamer Coldwater met rain-squalls and a lowering sky some 400 miles off the Virginia Capes one night last week. When the man on the morning watch (4 a.m. to 8 a.m.) took his post he had a dirty murk to peer into. It was not the kind of night that makes men love the sea, but soon the lookout heard something that made him glad he was on a ship. Coming closer, droning deep amid the seethe and hiss of the waves, he heard an airplane's motor. Then he saw an airplane, flying low to the waves. It was headed east-toward Europe!

Feeling none too comfortable, the lookout reported to the radio man. The radio man laconically flashed the message ashore. Later on, the Coldwater's company discussed the matter at mess. It was no night, they agreed for airmen to be at sea.

Ashore, the Coldwater's wireless message caused mystification. From nowhere along the coast had a trans-Atlantic flight attempt been reported. Sometimes Navy flyers go far to sea from Hampton Roads, but not on dirty nights, and no Navy flyers were missing. No weather bureau had been asked for trans-Atlantic weather reports, or even for the weather between the U. S. and Bermuda (a flight which has never been made from west to east).

When no further reports came in, flyers said: "Probably some damn fool trying to be spectacular." But oldtime seamen had another theory: now that the sea has taken so many lives in airplanes, perhaps there is a Flying Dutchman of the Air; an outbound plane that mariners will hear and see sometimes, far at sea, on dirty nights for flying.

Flights & Flyers

Toronto & Syracuse Shows. Overshadowed by the Cleveland Air Races & Show but important in their own compass were shows last week at Syracuse, N. Y. and Toronto. At Syracuse, Aaron Kranz performed a feat which with less other air news would have brought great newspaper headlines. When an exhaust pipe of an endurance plane cracked, he went up in another plane, climbed down a rope ladder to the first, made repairs, then dropped to earth by parachute.

Service Stations. The Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce at Cleveland last week instituted research on airport gas, oil and parts service stations. Standard Oil Companies of New Jersey, Indiana and California have organized a Stanavo agency to sell aviation gas and oil at ports. Richfield Oil Co. has built 16 of 35 proposed port stations. Texas Co. is stringing its depots along air routes.

*Thus beating the world's record of John Henry Mears and the late Captain Charles B. D. Collyer-23 days, 15 hours, made by air- plane and steamship in 1928. Last week Mr. Mears declared that he would next year try to fly the earth in 16 days with an amphibian. The pilot he wants: burly Bernt Balchen, now with Explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd in Antarctica.