Evening Star Newspaper, January 27, 1929, Page 83

Part 7—8 Pages ILLUSTRATED | 'FEATURES " MAGAZINE SEC i TION he Sunday Star, WASHINGTON, D. SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 27, 1929. FICTION AND HUMOR Will Non-Stop Flight Around the World Be Sensation of 19297 Art Goebel, Ace of the Pacific Flight, Announces Plan to Encircle Globe in One-Hop Solo Flight by Refueling in Air, Following Success of Question Mark’s Record Endurance Test—Proposes to Take. Off on Unparalleled Venture at Wichita, Kans., in August or September, Flying West to East. ART GOEBEL, Who plans the round-the-world hop, with his collection of trophies. He won the Dole airplane race to Hawaii. Wide World Photos. Retueling the Question Mark, which made an enduran ce record. BY JOHN L. COONTZ. EXT! A solo flight around the world. By whom? Art Goebel, ace of the Pa- | eific flight. When? below me and was lost sight of, though at times not more than 20 feet down. We then lowered our refueling hose, paying it out slowly until it struck the | wing of the Question Mark. There it was captured by one of the crew of the Question Mark and fitted into the end of a funnel. We are governed by our P g e Interior of Army transport type C-1, showing gas tanks, release valve and S N~y Interior of endurance plane of the Army tri- motor transport type, showing auxiliary gas tank, refueling appa- ratus and emergency berths. Photos from Army Air Corps. gained from the Question Mark as re- MAJ. CARL SPATZ, Who had charge of the record-breaking plan. Question Mark. equipment. Wonderful results have The Army’'s tri-motored transport, type C-2. e d what can be done in case of emergency To the two branches of the service refueling hose. gards extended flight, the Secretary of | been accomplished in the reliability of | War, Dwight F. Dvis, says, “The fiight | MOLOF. plancs and accessories. Not only i | | is is the flight of great value in a military from the report of medical authorities | grind, that none was any the worse for | is a great thing. It is going to have a | way, but it is also of commercial value. who examined the crew of the Question | his experience. | very good effect on aviation in view of It is an interesting experiment with a Mark at the completion of its 150-hour Commenting on the lesson to be!the general confidence it will inspire in feeding of the gasoline by a rope at- » | tached to the arm of onc member of the crew of the refueling plave which led to one of the men of the crew of the Question Mark. A long pull on this August or September, 1929. ‘That's the latest aviation “hot new: Col. Goebel himself announced as much from a sick bed at Wichita, | Kans,, immediately after the Question knowledge that engines and men can stand 150 to 300 hours in sustained flight is invaluable. As far as the Army is concerned it is interesting to Goebel to have a special machine buill | for his projected flight. Mark, which smashed all endurance | records in the air for heavier-than-air | craft or otherwise, came to land in rope meant to slow up, two pulls speed up and a series of jerks that the refuel- ing was over. Refueling over, the Ques- California January 7, after six and one- | tion Mark glided off to the left and we fourth days in the air, with Maj. Carl |came to land. Nine contacts were Spatz, U. S. A. A. C., commanding. formed within a period of 24 hours, One hundred and fifty hours, 40 |each lasting 9 minutes. That made 81 minutes and 15 seconds of sustained | minutes of actual contact for a period fght! Eleven thousand three hun-|of 2¢ hours. In those times it was dred miles flown; miles of chugging | hecessary for us only to remain true to motors, miles of drone, miles of iron, | course and maintain the same speed as miles of steel, miles of endurance for | the Question Mark. When an upward men and machine, the like never be- | current struck our ships we moved in fore attained. | unison, not changing our positions. Oil And born of that the dream of a sin- | in 5-gallon containers and food were gle plane winging its way round the | lowered by a rope and dropped into the world in solitary flight; bursting into | cockpit of the Question Mark, where As for the human strain, it appears Iceman Presents His Memoirs BY STEPHEN LEACOCK. (Note: The reading public of today adores memoirs. The publishers report that volumes of memoirs still continue to be among the best sellers. Readers ap- parently will take an intense interest in anything, provided it is put before them as something that somebody re- members. 1 understand that among, the Jorthcoming ‘volumes arc to be “The Memoirs of a Boy Scout,” ““Memoirs of a Guide,” “Memoirs of a Bootlegger,” and |some of my friends and fellow workers, |such as John Smith, Willlam Jones, | Jim Thompson and Joe Miller. I men- | tion their names here not because the | reader would know them, but because they are just as good as any other names {and they help to fill up the memoirs. * % k% good deal of practicable value to in- creasing the radius of flight.” { At the same time that Col. Goebel is planning his flight there comes word from abroad that the Graf Zeppelin | will possibly, also, undertake a round- | the-world flight in 1929. Should this | | come to pass the world will see the spectacle of the iwo challengers of the air vying with each other for endur- ance, and the reduction of the world to a minimum of encompassment by air- craft. The contest, if such should |come to pass, would easily be the premier news of the year and mark the high tide of aerial ambition. ‘When Lindbergh flew across the At- know, as observed Gen. Fechet, chief of the Army Air Corps, that planes can be kept on the fighting front for long periods of time. And the longer that time, no question. the more valuablc from the military point of view. Such a flight, if successfully made, would be of more practical value to the Navy, it is believed. The Navy, un- like the Army, is equipped with air- plane carriers and ships at sea with service planes. Refueling for a con- tinuous sea flight or overseas flight would be no trick at all for the Navy. In fact, it has been suggested that the Navy, because of its special equipment | for handling the sea legs of such a I can very distinctly remember the|lantic in 1927 in one of the greatest presidential election of 1908. Excite-|and the most romantic solo fiigfils ever ment ran high, as it was felt that one | recorded, the world thrilled as it had | or the other of the candidates was|pever thrilled before. Thirty-three practically certain to win. My father | hours out to Paris! it cried. And then jaunt, is peculiarly fitted to sponsor one. And lastly, for general defense pur- poses. such a flight would be of value in determining the advisability of estab- many other fascinating volumes. n’ anticipation of these, I venture to present here in brief outline some very striking selections from a work that will robably break all records as soon' as published in full, “The Memoirs of An the dawn of the East, passing the sun |they were seized by a member of the on its Westward flight, riding with the | crew.” stars at night over forlorn seas and| Goebel's itinerary, as outlined at pres- greeting again the dawn with a roaring, | ent, calls for a West-East flight starting exultant shout. | from Wichita in August or September. Betwixt the seas and the stars of | ace, the moon and lands of romance, the desert and blazing sun; over the heads of strange peoples in strange lands, forests filled with pestilential death and disease, by monsoons and | Jofty peaks of the unknown, on, on, on, | in one single, magnificent, glorious, | gorgeous flight. The world forever un- | der foot, the firmament forever over- head. Swung like a pendulum be- tween the earth and sky in one eternal, unfolding course, like a comet winging its way through the everlasting blue, the earth at its feet revolving ip its| own ambient sphere, changing with its progress from gay Summertime to somber Autumn and dull Winter and ! (5 then back again to playful Spring— that is the hope. Wk OW is this flight to be made? i Refueling is, unquestionably, the | Fig factor in making it. From experi- agce geined in the Question Mark flight, the successful passing from one plane to another while in flight great | quantities of gasoline over an extended | period of time, the problem of refueling ! on a world flight is looked upon as| salved. Tank planes will be posted ut' strategical points along the world route and these machines will meet thel plane as it passes over its course and deliver to it the sustaining petrol. And , in the same manner that food and oil was delivered to the Question. Mark crew, the same- would be delivered to the negotiators of the world coursc. “Aerial - refueling is a practical achievement,” declares Capt. Ross G. Hoyt, pllot of refueling plane No. 1 of | the Question Mark flight. Capt. Hoyt | delivered over 2,000 gallons of gas of { the 3,456 taken aboard by the Question Mark. His loads of fuel in no manner compromised_his plane in taking off to serve the Question Mark and all was delivered perfectly and on time. “I picked a landmark ahead for a straight course,” sald he in_describing his refueling operations. “I kept to fais course. The Question Mark dipped It would carry him out over the Atlantic, in all probability, via the Great Circle route, followed by Lindbergh, with re- fueling at the Irish coast or across the Channel on an approach to Paris. From Paris a tentative route would carry him to Aleppo in Syria; Karachi and Cal- cutta in India; Hongkong in China; Vladivostok, Petropaviovsk and Kam- chatka in Siberia; Vancouver, Seattle. Sait Lake City and Wichita. Refueling planes would be stationed at these several points on the globe and would meet him and his crew with gas and oil and food. e OEBEL has declared that such a flight is, to his mind, entirely feasible since the performance of the Question Mark. Here over 11,000 miles were flown in a single flight, consider- ably more than one-third of the dis- tance around the world. The Army flyers when they covered the globe in 1924 accomplished the feat in slightly more than 435 hours flying time. The total distance covered by them was 27,553 miles. Two other features of importance— vital importance—enter into a solo flight around the world: the physical capacity of human beings to make such & flight and the mechanical efficiency of motors to service on such a long strain. In the case of the Question Mark it was motor. trouble, the gradual attrition of ma- chinery in constant performance, that compelled its finale. One hundred gnd fifty hours of continuous motor perform- Iceman. Y le- came from Ireland. A'j’e!‘;gst 1 have always. heard my father say that his grand- father York - Larfitorf had come from Ireland. His great- uncle was one of the Henry Fjords of Norway. I understand that my grand- father settled first in Labrador, but, finding it too- warm there, he moved to New England and thence to New York. My father, however, was by nature a cold man and seldom*sp:ke of his past. * * My earliest recollections as a child g0 back to the Spanish-American War, when I suppose few people now alive can recall. It was fought between the Upited States and Spain. My father, who had a keen grasp of international politics though only a workingman, told us that he thought that the United States would win. I can dis- tinctly recall the outbreak of the war and how my father came home after his work and laid his ice on the table and said there was going to be a war. My mother took the ice and put it away for breakfast, but said nothing. * kK k¥ My memory, which Is still excellent, | although I am nearly 35, brings back | to me distinctly the New York of those early days. My readers will realize that it was before the days of the motor cars, and that before the days of the motor cars there were no motors. I distinctly recall that when I got my first regular job in an ice-house I had to, walk-from Brooklyn to Yonkers every day to my work. But we thought ance at 75 miles per hour is a marvelous | nothing of it in those days. achievement and one that American engineers can well be proud of. Life was very much simpler- and BUt { guicker in those days, as there were ! that time must be more than doubled | gnly 4,000,000 people in New York then, for a continuous flight around the world{ while such’ places as Jersey City and and in addition other strains and [ Newark were mere suburbs with less stresses must be the part of men and |than 500,000 people in them. The high- machine engaged in a globe-encircling | est buildings in the little metropolis of flight, weather conditions at times en- |those days were only 30 stories high, tirely dissimilar to those to be found in | though we already called them “sky- even-temperatured California. To meet scrapers.” | these conditions, it is the plan of Col. “Looking back now on this, J am 8 MY FATHER LA] v T GOING TO BE A WAR. took no part in it. He always claimed that a man delivering ice ought to keep away from the heat of political parti- sanship. He himself said that he would just as soon hand the ice to a Demo- crat as to a Republican. e I can bring back the recollection of the beginning of the Great War. At the time I was only 20 years old, but even at that age my mind was nearly as developed as it is now, and I under- stood that if war began there would certainly be fighting. My father, who followed closely all ,that was in the papers, was greatly ex- | cited over the war, and was convinced that Belgium could easil. beat France, | though it turned out that he was mis- | taken. He himself was able to keep in touch with the war situation, as he was engaged in loading ice on the meat ships that left almost daily for Europe. Added-to this, his own European de- E TABLE AND SAID THERE WAS compelled to smile at it, which I sup- pose few people could do. I remember how, when the first 30-story building was built, my father—who, though a workingman, was a man of great nat- ;urn! shrewdness—said he’d hate to fall joff the top of it ‘Work began with me early in life and has been more or less continuous, which is a matter I do not regret. as I con- sider that it is largely owing to an active life of work that at 35 I still &have all, or nearly all, my faculties, and my mind is at least as bright as it ever was, | My father’s influence secured me a position shoveling sawdust in an ice house, where my own industry gradu: ally raised me (o the top. As it is pos- sible that some of my readers do not understand the technique of an ice house, I may explain that our work in shoveling sawdust was of a highly spe- cialized character, demanding not only bodily strength but skill, courage and morality. scent gave him a sort of inherited in- In the Winter when the ice was put | sight into European politics, and he felt in it was our duty to shovel the saw-!sure that in the end Norway and Swe- dust on top of each layer of ice, so that | den would come out ahead. for every layer of ice there was above it a layer of sawdust. , i Skt Perhaps I can make my meaning clearer if I explain that the ice and the! cawdust were laid in alternate layers., A good way to understand what I mean is to grasp the idea that the ice was covered 'with the sawdust and that the sawdust was over the ice. I am afraid that I cannot 'state it more simply than that, and the reader must either get it or miss it. those days have drifted so far into the past few can remember them. The war came to an end at last and was suc- | ceeded by Prohibition, and Aerial-Navi- | gation and other things. On these I must not touch, as I am now getting within living memory. Indeed, it was shortly after the war that my failing strength at the shovel necessitated my retirement from active shoveling.. The partial collapse of my -mind, * ok k% This was our work in the Winter.: In With only a slight effort of memory, | All this seems many years ago, md' Summer our task was reversed, so that we shoveled the sawdust off and shov- eled the ice out sgain, which lent a very pleasing variety to our work and prevented it from being monotonous. ‘We thus rose and fell each Winter and Summer, * X k *x T recall very clearly the memory of |which happened at the same time, led /me to undertake, on the advice of my i medical attendant, the writing of these memoirs. It was his opinion that my mental powers had reached a state of decline, which would guarantee their success. My publishers assure me that ction has been amply justified. (Copyright, 1929 s came Chamberlin’s flight from New | York to Berlin (Kottbus), Germany, without refueling or mishap, save in| | landing. Now it is New York to New York; Paris to Paris; London to Lon- don; Berlin to Berlin; San Francisco to | San Francisco; Chicago to Chicago; St. Louis to St. Louis. | Aviation lends itself peculiarly to accomplishment and endeavor. Only a few short months ago it marked its twenty-fifth anniversary as a science And in that time, though it has ma unprecedented scientific progress, much yet remains that can be accomplished | in its name. Man will not be satisfied | until he has conquered the air thor- | oughly, since he set out to do so, and. will not rest until, in the name of com-, merce or national glory, he has reduced | the earth to a minimum spheroid, many times less than that which confronted | | its first circumnavigator. ‘The world will eventually be flown by | & lone eagle, whether it is Goebel or not. That flight will presage others in which time-cutting will be the objective sought. The possibilities build unre- mittingly. ‘The slashing of time is the greatest endeavor of the world today. Men, women and business want to get from here to there and from there to here in | the quickest time possible, The air af- fords the quickest mode of travel. It is unhampered by traffic of any kind and | speed limit there is governed only by, | limited ability of mechanical perform- ance. A hop around the world without stop would have its practical value in mafl transport circles. Postal authorities are engaged in ‘getting mail from its point of origin to its point of destination as quickly as possible. A round-the-world flight without break would be, without * doubt, they say, of interest to them in that it would show that through mail transportation from country to country could be made with or without stop- over. To them such a flight intrigues from the angle of greater radius flying. From the standpoint of the Army and Navy such a flight would show' lishing refueling bases on various na- tional possessions throughout the world. T, 'HE cost of a solo flight around the world is estimated, by civil aero- nautic officials, at $2.000,000. This high cost results from the necessity of transporting to various strategical points over the surface of the globe of supplics, men and equipment for ser- vicing the world flyers. In addition to this special arrangements and spe- cial concessions would have to be -ob- tained from the various countries on the flight itinerary in behalf of the flight. An extensive complement would be necessary for the wsccessful carry- ing out of the venture. Goebel already believes that his idea has taken with men of weath interest- ed in the promotion of aeronautics. 1A Western newspaper, since his an- nouncement of daring to undertake such a venture, has offered & prize of $50,000 to the first man who success- fully negotiates the course. The offer is good until January 1, 1931 and is open to the aviators of the wWerld. It prescribes: only that the flight pro- ceed “as nearly as possible along the '!""(?5 of fortieth parallel of north ias- ude.” In the meantime- the Fokker avia- tion firm in Europe, deeply intrigued by the performance of the Question Mark, is stirring in the direction of a round-the-world hop from Paris to Paris. The route outlined is that pro- posed as the probable route of Goebel. So, all in all, it is not improbable that, before 1929 has passed from the scene of the world's activities, that ball will be circumnavigated by some devotee to the greatest of all adven- turers, Mr, “Derrivg-Da." |