Word: lebrix
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After their big monoplane Trait d'Union ("Hyphen") crashed in the forests of Si- beria two months ago (TIME, July 27), Pilots Joseph Marie Lebrix and Marcel Doret, with Mechanic Rene Mesmin, dragged themselves back to Paris. Their escape from death had been almost a miracle. Nevertheless they prevailed upon their backer, Perfumer Francois Coty, to give them another plane just like the wrecked one for a second try at a Paris-Tokyo nonstop flight. Such a flight, 6,032-mi., would retrieve for France the distance record which Boardman & Polando had just wrested away by flying...
Early one morning last week the Hyphen II was wheeled out on Le Bourget Field for a takeoff. Pilot Lebrix paused in his preparations to scowl at the sight of another ship, pushed from a nearby hangar. It was the famed Question Mark which Capt. Dieudonne ("Doudou") Coste flew to the U. S. last year. And there was "Doudou" himself, stocky, sleek-haired, grinning. No one would be more pleased to see Lebrix beaten in a race. The two men had been enemies ever since their spectacular co-flight around the world in 1927, at the end of which Lebrix...
...Hyphen 11 got away first into the rising sun. Ten minutes later the Question Mark gave chase, overtook Lebrix & Doret beyond Brussels. Near Dusseldorf a fuel line became clogged and the Question Mark made a forced landing. Lebrix & Doret, whose plane had no radio, pushed on into dirty weather over Russia in the belief that their rival still led them...
...worse. It was much as it had been on the first flight, when the storms had beaten them down to the very treetops. At the end of 20 hr. the end came. It was near Ufa, 700 mi. beyond Moscow. Doret bailed out, landed safely with his 'chute. Lebrix and Mesmin died in the crash of the Hyphen II. Doret was vaguely quoted as saying that the engine had exploded...
Nothing was heard of the plane for hours after it passed Belgium. Then, at early evening, Moscow reported it overhead, going strong. Again it disappeared, over Siberia's wastelands. At 10:30 that night the motor quit. Lebrix aroused the sleeping mechanic, jumped with him. Doret brought the Trait d'Union nearby to the ground, "tailed out" just before the ship crashed into treetops not far from Irkutsk...