Word: trait
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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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...
...seems that I am always trying to tell a better one, which is, at the most, a common human trait. This time it is about turtles-your turtle which climbed down four stories (p. 40, TIME, July 20), and one I know of which returned to the fold after 39 years...
...from Paris' Le Bourget Field, into the dawn one day last week flew a great Dewoitine monoplane built for Perfumer François Coty. Its long, tapered wings stretched out 95 ft. Its Hispano Suiza engine roared with 650 h. p. Its narrow fuselage bore the legend Trait d'Union ("Hyphen"). In the cabin were short, squint-eyed Joseph Marie Lebrix, onetime flying partner (now enemy) of Dieudonné Coste; famed Aerobat Marcel Doret, and Mechanic René Mesnin. They were bound nonstop for Tokyo, 6,032 mi. away, farther than any plane had flown in a straight...
Although the flyers refused to discuss it, observers guessed that if the Tokyo flight were successful the Trait d'Union would fly on across the Pacific and attempt to smash the Winnie Mae's record around the world. A spare engine waited in Tokyo; another spare engine in Manhattan...
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...