WONDER FLYER

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 144, 21 June 1930, Page 9

WONDER FLYER

THE GREAT COSTE

KINGSFORD SMITH'S FOE

Captain Coste, the holder of two world's records for long-distance flying, in a straight line and in a closed circle, and rival of Kingsford Smith, is planning for the second,time to return Lindbergh's visit and fly from Le Bourgot to New York, says P. J. Philip in tho "New York Times."

Few men havo gone so resolutely in seavch of adventure and had such success. Coste is now in his thirtyseventh year, and has been flying aeroplanes for nineteen years. ' Like D'Artagnan, he came out ,of Gascouy with, for patrimony, a shrewd head, a skilled hand, and that kind of courage which rises as it meets danger and wins because it keeps cool. Dieudoune Costc—Doudou for short —is the proof that the raco of gentlemen adventurers of France has not died. Yet he himself has no idea that what he has done is either adventurous or romantic. He wanted to fly because, when he was a lad and flying was new, if fired his imagination. That was all there was to the first part. He wanted to make money out of flying, for having none in his youth ho knew the value of money, and that is all that has led to the second. That at least is how he< would sum it up. It has just been incidental that flying has led him into innumerable scrapes and dangers; tha,t \ he' has possibly lived through more escapes from death than any other living man. "ALWAYS AFRAID." As for courage, he will tell you that ho is always scared. He is scared when he takes a ride in a Paris taxicab. He is scared every time he takes off in a 'plane and every time ho has to make a landing. Ho is never really comfortable except when sitting in his little apartment in Passy, among his maps and souvenirs, cracking a bottle of champagne and some terse, little jokesi with his friends.' It was a puro musketeer adventure when at Salonika lie got tirqd of army rations and went duck shooting with' his 'plane and a machine-gun so as to get a ehango of diet. He paid for it, for ho was demoted, had his 'plane taken away from him, and was put back into the infantry for three^ months. But he bore no malice. He just fought so well as a foot soldier that he won a new citation and got his 'plane back again. It was pure d'Artagnan, too, that when ho and Bellonte landed at Tsitsicar, and the Chinese "troops took them for Bolsheviks because they were flying a red 'plane, they thought better of attacking him when they . saw the light that came into Coste's eye, though they handled Bellonte roughly. There is, too, a story current that during tho campaign in the Near East he sent a revolver bullet whistling past the car of his best friend because he had refused to share a box of sardines. It was again '-the musketeer spirit that developed in New Y ; ork when Costo and Ie Brix arrived there after their flight across the South Atlantic and their 'tour of South America. Official France had at first frowned on tho flight, but when the South Atlantic had been crossed it quickly rallied around. Once' New York has been reached, official support, however, was again withdrawn. NO SUPPORT. Costo wanted to fly across the continent, ship his 'plane to Japan and come home with tho quickest trip evor made from Japan to Paris. He was told that he could havo no introductions, no ofiicial support. His language, it may bo believed, was that of Cambroune, and official France had to pocket its official-mindedness and 'go out to Le Bourget to meet him when ho came tearing back from Tokio across China, Indo-China, India, tho Near East, tho Mediterranean in less than sis days, with only about as many hours sleep in the U^ne. All his lifo Coste seems to havo been fighting officialdom,, and winning. At school he was refractory, inattentive, according to* the pedagogic report, undisciplined, and uninterested. Yet he always held a good place in the class examinations as if to show his individual ability and his contempt for tho school system. It was freedom he was seeking, freedom to pit his wits antj his strength against all obstacles. Ho did not want to follow anyone else's ways. • Of obstacles ho found plenty. There was always that of the lack of money. His parents sent him to the School of Engineering at Aix-en-Provonce, but tliero again he showed himself impatient of the tedious processes of academic instruction. When ho was 10 lie loft and started to work at anything that offered,,. changing his job every time it became monotonous. The musketeer spirit had begun to show itself. He did not want' just to wake a living. Ho wanted la.live fully, risking his lifo it' need bo, so'long :is lie could got the full colour of it. He wanted to prove liiinscll'. Of Costo in tho war there arc many titles. He was transferred to tho Salonikfi front, and bce.iime there tlio master of the air. He had a record of nine official victories, eleven citations for bravery, and 817 flying hours, most of thorn dropping bombs, when the Armistice sounded. But it took all that to raise him from the rank of corporal to second lieutenant, for this gallant free lance still found it difficult to kenp in step with the official mind. He wont, through .the war, as lie had gone through school, at his own pace, doing what ho liked and wanted, and being so successful tit it that the official mind, while it had to Rive him good marks finally, still despaired of liis fiver doing any good just as Ins masters at school had done. IN HIS BLOOD. If over any man had Hying 3u his blood, Cosle had it then. Hu was not interested in anything else. As soon as he w:is out of the army he engaged as a commercial pilot, first with otio iiue, then with another, flying in all

weathers, always delivering his passengers and freight safely and on {ime, enjoying himself immensely between fights, making enemies and making friends.

Robert Thierry took Costo with him when he tried to make a long distance record which would beat that of Polletior Doisy. It was a tragic flight. The heavily loaded 'plane refused to rise, and when they reached the Alps they found they could not cross, and turned north to pass over Germany. In the Black Forest they hit a tree. The 'plane crashed, and while they lay pinned down and helpless, Thierry was asphyxiated by the escaping gas. Coste; was liberated in time and spent two weeks in a German gaol for flying over Germany without a permit.

That experience might have discouraged many a man. But in 192 C Coste was off again in another Breguet trying for the distance record. When one examines his subsequent flights what one finds amazing is the iron endurance, of the man.i On his flight to Djask he was thirty-two hours at the controls-. Orf his second attempt to fly across Russia he battled all night and half the next day with a tremendous tempest of wind over the Ural Mountains, and could not get across. After thirty hours' flying he landed his 'plane safely on the mountain side. It was the same storm that Chamberlin fought all1 night on his flight from New York to Kottbus. Coste crossed 'the South Atlantic in 26 hours 19 minutes, and came thundering home from ! that trip from Tokio to Paris in less time than it took d'Artagnan to ricle his horse to Paris from his ancestral home. On the flight Coste slept an average of less than two hours at each stopping place. THE GREAT DREAM. Since Lindbergh crossed from west to east it has been every European airman's ambition to cross the Atlantic from east to west. But it has not yet been quit© successfully done, not as it should be done. Many have tried, and it is not because the men are wanting that it has not been accomplished. It is a longer road, a tougher road, than the one from New York here. If any man m Franco can do it and any machine, people said, •it ■would bo D'oudou' Costo and his "Question Mark." So ho set about trying. What happened last year is still recent history and not forgotten. He went the southern route because- the air currents were supposed to be with him from the "Azores. Instead, he found a head wind that he and Bcllonte had to buck for five hours. Their flying pace was cut down to nearly half. It was obvious they could I never do the thing chicly, even if they did make the American coast. Without j hesitation Coste turned back. The wind he had been fighting would carry him home. He had not anything to explain. It was just common sense— courageous common sense. The season had grown late and he had the machine still on his hands, so he turned least. The/story of that flight, which began on 27th September last at 7.45 a.m. aud; ended at Tsitsikar, in Manchuria, aa evening was. clo'-'"-; in on 30th September, and all thr ppened afterward, is one of the- mo .anazing stories of flight. It was snowing and freezing as they crossed the Siberian plains. At one time the carburettor froze, the engine stopped, and they dropped 1000 feet. Fortunately they were flying high, as there was fog below. How they landed near a farm and could not stand but collapsed on the ground from fatigue, how they were taken for Bolsheviks and put in . prison, how they wero released because tho British Consul at Mukden was playing golf with General Hsiao Liang-chang and heard where they wove, and how they went back in triumph to their 'plan* with forty gallons of gasoline to find it intact —for the Chinese* are so uncivilised as not to care for souvenirs is a story they themselves have written. Within a month of his return frbm it all Costo was making more world records, this time with Paul Codos. Then he sat down to prepare for this year's, attempt to cross the Atlantic.