Word: odom
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. William P. Odom, 30, globe-girdling veteran flyer; in an airplane crash (his F51 Mustang went out of control at Cleveland's National Air Races); in Berea, Ohio. Odom's round-the-world flight in April 1947 (78 hrs. 55 min.) broke Howard Hughes's record; his solo global trip four months later in a converted A26 bomber (73 hrs. 5 min.) shattered Wiley Post's old solo mark; his 5,000-odd-mi. hop in 36 hours from Honolulu to Teterboro, N.J. last March set a new light-plane record...
...Honolulu Airport one day last week, a tiny, single-engined Beechcraft Bonanza was rolled out onto the runway. Into it stepped lanky, 29-year-old William P. Odom, round-the-world speed champion (TIME, Aug. 18, 1947), dressed in a splashy tie, double-breasted suit and Homburg hat. Odom had managed to cram 300 gallons of gasoline into his red-and-silver monoplane, some in extra tanks on his wings and some in his cabin...
With a handful of chicken sandwiches, a Thermos jug of hot tea and some water beside him, Odom took off and headed east. Nine hundred miles away, he waved goodbye to a B-17 which had gone with him for company. Six hours later he waved hello to another which came out to escort him over San Francisco. Over Chicago, he failed to notice that a gas tank had gone dry, lost several thousand feet before he could get his stalled engine started from another tank. Over Pennsylvania, he plugged in an electric razor and shaved. Then he landed...
That was the way Odom and his employer, Wichita's Beech Aircraft Corp., wanted him to look. They wanted to impress U.S. executives with the reliability, range, and low operating costs of personal planes. Odom's fuel bill for the trip...
...Aviator William P. Odom set a new distance record for single-engined light airplanes when he flew a 185-h.p. Beechcraft 2,407 miles* from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif. Said Odom, stepping out of the plane after his 22-hour flight: "I've never been so thirsty in my life. I guess it was looking at all that water...