RACE AGAINST SUN

Southland Times, Issue 19290, 8 July 1924, Page 5

RACE AGAINST SUN

AIRMAN LOSES BY AN HOUR. A WONDERFUL FLIGHT. (Sun Special.) SAN FRANCISCO, June 24. Although he failed to beat the sun in his dawn-to-dusk flight from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Russell Maughan, the American airman, crossed the continent, a distance of 2670 miles, in less than 20i hours. The sun won by a single hour. Millions of people watched for Maughan as he crossed the Rocky Mountains and came down their Pacific slopes to the western sea. In the early afternoon, crossing the western plains, he was terribly weary. He snatched a rest while his mechanics worked feverishly over the ’plane every 500 or 600 miles, when he stopped for gas and water. He left Ogden (Utah) only 40 minutes ahead of the sun. Previously he had flown at only 600 ft above the ground, but when crossing the Rockies he was forced to soar to great heights. At 7.30 p.m. he passed Reno (Nevada) like a black meteor flying straight into the setting sun. The rapidity with which he was reported by intervening towns showed that he approached San Francisco at a rate of three miles per minute. Finally it was a race between Maughan and a terrific fog-bank which was coming from the Pacific. Army trucks, with blinking lights, assisted him to land. Officials allowed only ten minutes for interviewers and photographers, and then hurried him to bed, where the doctors hope to keep him for two days. Maughan said he lost 90 minutes at Dayton (Ohio) because a souvenir hunter snatched an important valve from the motor of his aeroplane. The American Government has announced a regular aerial mail service across the continent, summer and winter. The schedule calls for 34 hours’ transit for letters between New York and San Francisco. An aerial route of 1500 miles east and west of Chicago will be illuminated for night flying. The postal rates for aerial transmission will be four times those for carriage by train.