Word: piloting
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Early last summer the Baroness decided to cap these exploits by flying the North Atlantic. In July she arrived in Manhattan with a dour, 31-year-old Swedish pilot named Kurt Bjorkvall and the backing of the Stockholm Tidningen-Dagblad. Acquiring an old Bellanca high-wing monoplane with one motor, they announced they would fly from Floyd Bennett Field to Stockholm...
...times the airship Hindenburg flew the Atlantic. Two Lufthansa flying boats made the trip twice. Beryl Clutterbuck Markham accomplished the hard East-to-West passage solo. Crooner Harry Richman and Pilot Dick Merrill went over and back. Meantime the Blixen-Bjorkvall Bellanca, loaded with ping-pong balls like Harry Richman's Lady Peace, never left the ground. Its take-off for Stockholm was constantly postponed, apparently because the pair were finicky about the weather. This did not bother Baroness Blixen-Finecke. The blonde noblewoman was having so much fun partying on Long Island that she could not find time...
Last week, tired of the delay, the Tidningen-Dagblad suddenly withdrew its backing. Behind the Baroness's back, Pilot Bjorkvall bought the plane himself...
...Long Island party two nights later, Baroness Eva was tipped off that he was about to take off alone. Bundling into flying togs, she dashed at dawn to Floyd Bennett Field where Pilot Bjorkvall at first would not speak to her. Eventually she cornered him in a hangar from which she presently emerged in tears. Said she. "I'm grounded. ... I expect he wishes to have all the publicity. I'm mad, but I'm a lady and cannot swear...
...flyer who thus narrowly avoided death was Squadron Leader F. D. R. ("Ferdie") Swain, 33-year-old Royal Air Force test pilot. A voluble, keen-faced bachelor, he entered the R. A. F. in 1922, served in Ismailia, Heliopolis, commanded a test flight in Africa during which he crashed in the bush, was provisioned by parachute and rescued by a special safari. Last June he was appointed to a crack experimental group at Farnborough. In his flight last week he carried a silver figurine of St. Christopher as mascot, relished his narrow squeak, as he explained afterward, because "flying...