ROUND THE WORLD

Southland Times, Issue 19345, 10 September 1924, Page 5

ROUND THE WORLD

AMERICAN’S GREAT FLIGHT SUCCESS VIRTUALLY ASSURED PRINCE OF WALES GREETS THE AVIATORS. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Reuter’s Telegrams.) NEW YORK, September -8. (Received September 9, 8.10 p.m.). The United States round-the-world fliers have arrived here from Boston and were greeted by cheering thousands, including the Prince of Wales and Sir Esme Howard, British Ambassador. The fliers expect to complete the circumnavigation of the world at Seattle within ten days. The fliers started out on their journey from Santa Monica, California, on March 17. Major Frederick Martin, SquadronLeader, crashed in a wilderness of snow in the Aleutian Islands. The remaining three fliers went on without him, whilst the American people waited anxiously for news of the missing man. Ten days passed and then Martin and his mechanic, Sergeant Harvey, stumbled up to a trading port, nearly frozen and famished. They told a thrilling tale of how their machine crashed into a mountain when they were flying in a fog so dense that they could only guess their way and could see nothing; and how, when they crashed, they stood by their wrecked machine, using part of its framework as firewood, and then wandered, lost, for days in the snowy wastes. Major Martin was thus left behind and Lieutenant Lowell H. Smith took command of the expedition, which then flew over the Kurile Islands, Japan, China, Burma, India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Turkey, Serbia, Austria, Germany and France to England. England reached, the Americans then had the crossing of the stormy, tumbled stretch of the North Atlantic ocean between the Orkney Islands and Labrador before them. In this crossing, Lieutenant Leigh-Wade met with disaster. Iceland and Greenland were safely crossed .by the remaining two fliers. Labrador was reached and the last lap of the journey was begun down the Canadian coast. At last the United States itself was reached. The world has been circumnavigated by air. It is estimated that the aviators made 55 regular stops while crossing the territory of 23 nations. One of the pilots, interviewed in London, said: “We fly close enough together to communicate by signals. We have a plan by which, if one should have to descend, we can find out by signalling if he needs help. If he does not, the others go on to the next stop and wait for him. But we’ve had no engine failures, although weather has forced us to land sometimes. The longest sea stage was between Chicagoff and Paramushir —850 miles. For navigation we rely on dead reckoning, working out a compass course with regard to the wind. We’ve found it answer well enough.” Lieutenant. Smith said the worst time of all was in Alaska, where they met the erratic and battering wind called the “woollies” which threatened to tear the machines to pieces. “Those winds,” he explained, “blew' awfully cold, and at a speed at times of 80 miles an hour. One of the great difficulties was that they changed every few minutes. On the other hand, the terrific heat was sometimes almost as trying, in a different way, as the ‘woollies.’ In Syria and other warm parts it was tremendous—--114 degrees in the shade of the machine at times.”