TRANSPACIFIC FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 8, 9 July 1931, Page 9

TRANSPACIFIC FLIGHT

ROBBINS AND JONES START REFUELLING- PLANS (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) (Received 9th July, 10 a.m.) SEATTLE, Sth July. The Bobbins and Jones monoplane Fort Worth took off at 3.57 a.m. on Wednesday for Tokio, . via British Columbia and Alaska. The aviators, Reg. Eobbins and H. L. Jones, plan to refuel in mid-air late on Wednesday over Fairbanks. The refuelling 'plane with two other Texans, Jimmy Mattern and Nicko Greener, arrived 'at Fairbanks on Tuesday from Texas. The flyers hope to reach Tokio on Friday morning. The Fort Worth is a Lockheed Vega with a 225 h.p. Wright motor that has been run twelve hundred hours. The 'piano has been flown 550 hours. The flyers purchased it second-hand. Its cruising speed is 95 miles an hour. It is not equipped with radio. Jones will be navigator and Bobbins pilot, but Jones will take the controls occasionally. The refuellers have a trimotored Ford 'plane, and will refuel at Fairbanks and Solomon and in Siberia. The weather conditions for the first part of the route are ideal. The total distance is 5100 miles. The flyers hope to win tho 25,000 dollars prize offered by the Japanese newspaper "Asahi." Eobbins holds the commission, of Colonel in the National Guard of Texas, but is a barnstormer who taught himself to fly eight years ago and set the refuelling endurance record in 1929. Ho is aged .28 and married, with an eight-year-old son. Jones is a Texas oilman, who came along for the excitement. He is unmarried.