Flights & Flyers

Berlin to Rio. Excited Spanish soldiers bungled the refueling at Seville. Instead of the expected northeast trades off the African coast, came head and beam winds. Torrential downpours near the Equator bore down like tons of added ballast. But the Graf Zeppelin plowed steadily along her new trade route to Brazil, landed at Pernambuco after 62 hours. The time from Friedrichshafen to Rio de Janeiro was six and a half days. Besides being her sixth Atlantic crossing the flight was a two-point triumph for the Graf: 1) proving the dirigible equal to tropical weather; 2) making Latin-America "Zep-minded."

Bromley's Luck. Last June Lieut. Harold Bromley raced his low-wing Lockheed down a runway for a Tacoma-to-Tokyo flight. Gasoline splashed in his eyes. Out of control, the plane ground-looped, broke into pieces. In September the late Lieut. Herbert J. Fahy testflew an identical plane for Bromley. Part of the tail surfaces washed away. Fahy was severely injured. Last week Bromley's third Tacoma-Tokyo ship burst into flames over the Mojave desert, near the Lockheed plant at Burbank, Calif. Testpilot M. W. Catlin was horribly burned.

Britain's Amy. Scarcely noticed by British newsmen when she took off alone in her tiny Gipsy-Moth biplane from Croydon, Amy ("Call-me-Johnnie") Johnson landed last week at Port Darwin, Australia, a national heroine. Three days behind the record of Harold J. L. ("Bert") Hinkler, Miss Johnson's 11,500-mi. flight in a little secondhand, patched-up airplane, over perilous terrain and sharky waters, with an infected hand and short on sleep, was yet an amazing feat. Said she at Surabaya, Java, before starting across the Timor Sea: "The less I think of this, the better I know this last stretch will be the biggest fright of my life. . . . Oh, you don't know that forlorn feeling--above you, a grim black sky; underneath, the revolving sea, and you are quite alone in a frail machine, every moment fearing that the motor will fail and you will have to face calamity. No, no--never again!"

In the London Daily News appeared an article by Editor Tom Clarke who had declined to help finance her trip: "I apologize to Amy Johnson."

Airport Marker. Although Danville, Va.'s Standard Oil building bears a roof-mark pointing to the town's airport, Pilot Ogden Maxwell Goodsell did not see it. Circling aimlessly, Pilot Goodsell spied a golfer, dropped a milkbottle bearing a scribbled note asking him to lie on the turf with his head pointing toward the airport. Golfer Hunter Y. Lea obligingly lay down. Pilot Goodsell flew straightaway to a safe landing.

Eagle. In Buffalo Valley, Perry County, Pa., farmers reported seeing an airplane come over the mountains, a bald eagle swoop savagely at it, fall decapitated to earth.

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