Word: herndon
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...Pacific Ocean was finally crossed nonstop by an airplane last week, the feat caused barely more excitement than many of the attempts and untoward incidents preceding it. Manhattan evening papers considered it far less important than that day's World Series game. Even the "hardluck flyers," Socialite Hugh Herndon Jr. and oldtime Barnstormer Clyde Pangborn, flyers of two oceans, seemed to sense an anticlimax when they skidded their wheelless Bellanca monoplane into the airport at Wenatchee, Wash., 41 hr. after taking off from Samishiro Beach, 280 mi. north of Tokyo. Their troubles on the flight had been less than...
Soon after they left Samishiro Herndon cut a wire which let the plane's landing gear drop into the sea, reducing the load by 300 Ib. and the head resistance by 17%. It meant that wherever they came down they would have to land the plane on its belly...
...After that, ice began to form on the wings as they climbed high over cloud banks, making the plane logy. A painful moment occurred at 3,000 mi. when the engine coughed - until the flyers remembered to switch from an empty gasoline tank to a full one. At first Herndon & Pangborn intended to fly to Salt Lake City, if possible, for a new distance record. They did fly as far as Spokane but turned back to Wenatchee "because we liked the looks of it better." With Pangborn at the controls they circled the field three times, dumped the last...
...Said Herndon: "Gimme a cigaret...
Editor Sheba's story: Herndon & Pangborn were under contract with North American Newspaper Alliance whose client, Tokyo Nichi-Nichi, had bought the rights to their story. The contract made it improper for the flyers to compete for the Asahi's prize, but the Asahi made persistent overtures nonetheless. Each paper feared that the other would win the flyers as proteges. Hence, when the government officials showed hostility toward the men for entering Japan without a permit and flying over fortified zones, each paper seized the opportunity to destroy the flyers' value to the opposition. Both alighted heavily...