Posted on 07/14/2008 5:35:55 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Tired, but smiling and happy after spanning Siberian wastes today, the five aviators spent an hour and 18 minutes in Fairbanks, then dashed southeastward, leaving here at 9:36 P. M. New York Time.
Before the take-off, Radio Engineer Richard Stoddart said the fliers could not take fuel enough for the 3,380-mile hop to New York, and probably would refuel at Edmonton, Winnipeg or St. Paul.
[En route, the fliers decided to land at Winnipeg, according to a Canadian Press dispatch from Edmonton, where this information was picked up by an air transport company’s radio station.]
[After the take-off, according to a Canadian Press dispatch, Stoddart informed an air transport company at Edmonton that the plane was setting a course for St. Paul. The distance from Fairbanks to St. Paul is approximately 2,500 miles; from Fairbanks to New York, 3,380 miles. The distances from Fairbanks to Winnipeg and from Fairbanks to Edmonton are, respectively, 2,038 miles and 1,500 miles.
[While flight headquarters here estimated their probable time of arrival at 4 or 5 P. M. today, it would be possible for the fliers to arrive at 3:30 P. M., allowing one hour for refueling, provided the plane maintained an average speed of 200 miles an hour.
[The plane radioed at 1:32 New York time it was 811 miles out of Fairbanks, Gene Erckenbrack, amateur radio operator at Seattle, said after intercepting a report from te plane, according to the Associated press. This would make their average speed almost 203 miles an hour from Fairbanks.]
Far ahead of the late Wiley Post’s globe-girdling record of 7 days 18 hours 49 minutes, the aviators arrived here at 8:18 P. M., 12 hours 17 minutes after taking off from Yakutsk, 2,456 miles from Fairbanks. They touched American soil again 3 days 58 minutes after leaving it at New York last Sunday evening.
Service crews rushed refueling operations while Hughes was applauded by a crowd that had assembled hours before his arrival. The flier had radioed word in advance that he would decline interviews here in an effort to avoid delay. Before his message was received hotel rooms had been engaged for possible use by the aviators.
Hughes did come from the ship several times to pose for pictures. He was in a smiling mood and expressed pleasure at the absence of autograph seekers.
While Hughes directed refueling, Stoddart said in a broadcast that the crew was “a little tired, but we were pretty comfortable on the entire trip.”
“We are faced with the difficulty here of having only a 2,800-foot runway and we will be unable to take a full load,” he explained. “Also we will be flying into the darkness from here and we want no mishaps at this late date.”
The big crowd at the airport fidgeted for a quarter of an hour while the fliers made final inspections of the ship’s nose, tail and radio antenna and removed pieces of baggage to reduce weight for the take-off. The precautions proved a success, for the plane left the ground without incident.
Stoddart took time here to describe incidents of the trip. At Yakutsk, he said, there was only one person, a girl, who spoke English.
He explained his most difficult experience was in understanding Russian radio stations, making it hard to keep track of schedules. But he declared the Russian engineers “went to a lot of trouble” for the fliers and aided particularly by radio directions for the landing at Omsk earlier in the flight.
The weather forecast was “generally overcast” for the area toward Edmonton.
The radio operator made the report at 1:15 A. M., Thursday, New York time. The location of the Hughes plane was not given. A few minutes earlier Hughes had inquired for weather reports at Winnipeg and Edmonton. He was told the weather at both Canadian cities was clear.
Along the coast south of Anadyr the Soviet Artic flier Sigismund Levanevsky – now presumed lost with five companions last year on a trans-polar flight – once reported the unusual phenomenon of dense fog combined with hurricane wind. It was in June, 1933 when Levanevsky was searching for James Mattern while that American flier was missing in the Anadyr wilderness.
Levanevsky said that it was like flying in a vast, whirling steam cloud and that he had several narrow escapes from being dashed against precipitous cliffs. Afterward he declared it the most dangerous flying country he had ever struck, although the crew of the vessel Chelyuskin, marooned on the ice north of the Anadyr peninsula, were rescued early in the Spring of 1934 without the loss of a single man or plane.
Some anxiety was caused in Moscow this afternoon when the United States Embassy was informed that radio connection with Hughes was suddenly broken at 3:35 P. M., Moscow time. The connection was not re-established until about 9 P. M. Hughes was then about 200 miles from Anadyr, but he said he had been in touch before that with American radio stations. The cause of the radio interruption was believed here to have been bad weather or, perhaps, a changed wave length.
The five airmen took off from Yakutsk at 9:01 o’clock tonight [8:01 A. M. in New York and 3:01 P. M. in Moscow], pointing their silver craft to Fairbanks, Alaska, 2456 miles eastward across the Artic wastes. The international date line cut across their course over the Bering Strait, giving them back in a lump the twenty-four hours they have been losing, theoretically, an hour at a time for approximately every 600 miles of eastward flight.
The five-man team hopped from Yakutsk 60 hours and 41 minutes after leaving New York. Wiley Post, flying a slightly different course required 113 hours and 58 minutes to reach Khabarovsk, about the same distance out of New York.
Post, flying alone and requiring longer stops for sleep, averaged about 83 miles an hour, counting time spent on the ground, for his record-smashing 1933 flight. The Hughes team, when it landed here, had a comparable average of about 153 miles per hour – almost twice as fast.
Hughes and his companions have been snatching sleep aloft, using grounded time principally for speedy refueling. They halted here only 2 hours and 53 minutes after completing their fourth leg – a 2,177-mile hop from Omsk, Western Siberia.
On the fifth leg Hughes headed across wild territory where the soil is frozen for nine months of the year. He pointed northeastward to the extreme tip of Siberia, across the 60-mile wide Bering Strait to Cape Prince of Wales, extreme northwestern tip of Alaska, and thence about 650 miles inland to Fairbanks.
Before Hughes left Yakutsk he telegraphed Moscow air authorities his warmest thanks for the co-operation he received in Soviet Russia. He was expected to radio a farewell message to his Soviet friends while crossing the Bering Strait, from Russian into American territory.
Stevenson Field, almost a mile square and with two paved runways, is equipped with boundary lights and floodlights for night landings. Gasoline for the refueling is ready in a tank wagon, and the regular gasoline pumps of Trans-Canada Airlines would be available, Cliff Kaake, airport manager and official time-keeper for the flight, said.
It was estimated here that if he landed in Edmonton it would be between 5 and 6 A. M. New York time. It would be about four hours later if he picked Winnipeg for a Canadian landing.
Howard Hughes and his crew of round-the-world fliers were expected last night to return to Lloyd Bennett Field, whence they started last Sunday night, before dusk today. Flight headquarters at the World’s Fair grounds estimated their probable time of arrival at 5 P. M., but said it was possible they might reach their starting point and destination as much as an hour earlier under favorable conditions.
They will be met at the airport by one of the biggest crowds ever assembled there. Mayor F. H. La Guardia and Grover Whalen, president of the New York World’s Fair, 1939, will greet them officially. After broadcasting over one of the most extensive radio networks ever provided for an aviator, Hughes will board a small plane and fly to an unannounced destination.
Tomorrow, if all goes well, he will fly back to the city, alighting at the foot of Wall Street in an amphibian to rejoin his companions of the flight and take part in a parade from the Battery to City Hall at noon. At City Hall Mayor La Guardia will deliver an address of welcome.
Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine ordered Deputy Chief Inspector John J. Gallagher of Brooklyn to make adequate police arrangements for the return of the fliers. Inspector Gallagher said he had assigned four captains, 100 sergeants and 1,000 patrolmen to take up positions at the field at 11 o’clock this morning. In addition, twenty motor-cycle men will be on hand to surround the plane when it lands and keep souvenir-hunters and autograph-seekers away.
A tent 30 by 60 feet and 24 feet high was erected last night over the bronze marker designating the spot where Wiley Post touched earth after his record-breaking solo flight around the world. Under the spreading canvas workmen were rigging telephone and telegraph lines to spread the news of the arrival of the New York World’s Fair, 1939, as Hughes named his plane. Before Hughes hops off for a brief rest, he and his companions will be taken to the tent for interviews and photographs.
Mr. Whalen declared last night in a radio address broadcast at 9 P. M., over a Mutual network, that the flight of Hughes and his companions had focused attention anew on the speed and safety of modern air travel. Mr. Whalen discussed the aviation exhibit planned for the World’s Fair to show the extent to which the airplane is an instrument capable of promoting world peace by improving communication.
When Hughes and his crew arrive at the airport they will be greeted by the most elaborate and extensive radio set-up ever assembled to broadcast the welcome given an arriving personage, according to New York radio men.
Microphones in airplanes and on the earth, as well as numerous others attached to portable apparatus carried on the backs of announcers and engineers, will be in operation to pick up the ceremonies at every point of vantage. The radio network these microphones will feed is likely to reach unprecedented proportions, it was said.
In the WABC system will be at least 115 stations scattered from coast to coast and augmented by numerous short-wave transmitters to relay the description to other lands. The WEAF-WJZ system probably will comprise at least 152 stations, and the WOR network is expected to reach at least seventy-seven broadcasters. Thus the total number of stations aligned fro the event should be greater than 350.
WABC will broadcast over at least seven microphones, manned by a corps of twelve announcers and attended by fifteen engineers. More than five automobile loads of apparatus already have been taken to the field by the Columbia System.
Although Wiley Post and Howard Hughes flew different routes for most of the way around the world, their paths crossed at several points, making possible a comparison of their performances.
Post, flying solo, made Moscow in 50 hours 10 minutes after having left New York. Hughes set his big plane down in the Russian capital 32 hours 55 minutes after his take-off from Floyd Bennett Field, 17 hours 15 minutes ahead of Post’s time.
Post broke his journey over Siberia at Khabarovsk, 113 hours 58 minutes from his start. Hughes flew north of there, landing at Yakutsk, an equal distance from New York, 57 hours 48 minutes after the take-off at New York. At that point, therefore, Hughes was 56 hours 10 minutes ahead.
It took Post 162 hours 45 minutes to reach Fairbanks, Alaska, while at that point Hughes was 72 hours 58 minutes out of New York.
Thus at Fairbanks Hughes was 89 hours 47 minutes ahead of the record.
ALLENTOWN, N. Y., July 13 (AP).-Financial difficulties of a fifty-year-old Methodist Episcopal church appeared solved today by the church’s entry into the oil business. Two wells, each producing twenty barrels weekly, blossomed on the church lawn.
Trustees, representing a membership of sixty, decided to lease the lawn for drilling to finance the construction of a Sunday school and other improvements, the Rev. John A. Mann, pastor, asserted. The church receives one-seventh royalty from the oil produced. This royalty is expected to provide an income of between $30 and $40 monthly. Trustees estimated that it will take ten years to finance the needed improvements, after which time the money will be used for church expenses and missionary work, he explained.
Not only is the church financing its improvements but gas from the wells is being used to heat the church and parsonage.
A tale of how two impish fruit peddlers scored a moral victory in an episode of the eternal conflict between policemen and some peddlers was unfolded yesterday before Magistrate Michael A. Ford in Jefferson Market Court. The moral victory was somewhat dampened when Magistrate Ford sentenced each of the peddlers to two days in jail.
Tuesday evening, it developed, Patrolman Walter Headwell was walking through the garment district in midtown Manhattan when he came upon the peddlers. The two men saw Headwell, and they quietly vanished. Headwell, left alone with the fruit wagon, called upon another patrolman for help.
Then taxicab drivers and other habitués of the neighborhood were treated to a sight that seemed humorous to them. Grimly pushing the carts, the policemen marched back to their station, while delighted onlookers called out: “Here, I’ll take a nickel’s worth of cherries,” or “Let’s have a couple of your best plums.” Besides, it was a warm evening.
Adding to the impish joy of their experience the peddlers walked into the station house soon after the harassed policemen and gave themselves up.
Yesterday, however, was another day. After hearing the story, Magistrate Ford asked the peddlers, who said they were Issie Fox, 34 years old, of 456 West Fortieth Street, and Jacob Cohen, 49, of 412 East Tenth Street, why they had walked away. Cohen said he had gone to see a man on business, and Fox that he had gone to borrow money to pay a fine.
Evidently Fox did not get the money, for he and Cohen took the jail sentences rather than pay fines of $5 each.
Mr. Whalen discussed the aviation exhibit planned for the World’s Fair to show the extent to which the airplane is an instrument capable of promoting world peace by improving communication.
In the near-term I see a different role developing for the airplane.
If the circumference of the earth is 24,900 miles, they cut a lot off by flying so far in the north. I think they should do it again and this time make stops on both sides of the equator.
How’s about emailing it to the people interested instead and not wasting post space with stories about another nut-job!
If you think Mr. Hughes was just a “nut-job,” you don’t know much about his history.
Thanks. I'll take it under advisement.
(Half a wit is better than none, I suppose.)
“Two wells, each producing twenty barrels weekly”
Not exactly high output.
Today it would be over $300,000/year. I wonder what the price of oil was in 1938.
Somewhere between $1.00 and $1.14 a barrel. http://www.forbes.com/static_html/oil/2004/oil.shtml
Doing the math a little differently, if they got $30/month, that means a gross of $210 a month from the wells producing a little over 160 barrels a month, or a little under $1.31 a barrel. So, say roughly 1% of what today's cost was.
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