Word: flights
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Professor Lowe,* meteorologist and inventor, built the balloon City of New York, then the largest ever constructed (diameter, 130 ft.), for a flight across the Atlantic. The outbreak of the Civil War upset that plan. Professor Lowe went to Washington to propose to General Winfield Scott the formation of a balloon corps. The General was not impressed, finally lent his ear and his aid only at the personal prompting of President Lincoln...
...awarded. Writing in Outlook & Independent this week Carl B. Allen, smart aviation editor of the New York World, submits: "... That the D. F. C. has strayed from its original conception as [an] acknowledgment of 'heroism or extraordinary achievement ... in an aerial flight' and degenerated somewhat into the plaything of politicians and a pawn in the hands of the Ballyhoo Boys...
Three months after the eligibility order was issued occurred the Paris flight of Charles Augustus Lindbergh which "through the wildest stretch of the imagination, could not be construed as 'part of the duties incident to' ... membership [in the Missouri National Guard or the Air Corps Reserve]." Public clamor demanded a D. F. C. for Lindbergh, and the Air Corps expediently recommended the award...
...months later Secretary Wilbur pinned the D. F. C. upon the breasts of Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd and Radioman Noville for the flight to France - a private venture backed by the late Rodman Wanamaker. "At the same table ... sat Bernt Balchen, Lieutenant in the Norwegian Naval Reserve . . . and Bert Acosta [who] had flown Byrd and Noville across the Atlantic ... to them, publicly, Secretary Wilbur expressed regret that because they were 'civilians' the law barred them from...
Crowning absurdity cited by Writer Allen was the decoration of youthful Capt. Benjamin Mendez who, sent by the Colombian Government to the U. S. to learn to fly, was known at Mitchel Field as "Benny the Gas Boy." He won the Cross for a homeward flight to Bogota "during which Mendez wrecked at least two airplanes and took nearly enough time to have flown around the world...