Week-end

With the Shenandoah laid up for lack of helium, the U. S. Navy is using the Los Angeles for systematic flights, designed to extract all possible information for the commercial exploitation of zeppelins. A round-trip from Lakehurst to the Bermudas last week was but one of a series of carefully planned experiments. It was interesting because, for the first time in U. S. history, mail to foreign countries was carried by air. A brief announcement by the Post-Office Department only a day or two before the Los Angeles sailed brought 2,200 letters, 138 postcards and some registered packages. Roughly, one-fifth of the mail was sent by philatelists, looking to future values for the specially marked stamps.

The Los Angeles carried both Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Douglas Robinson and Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Naval Aeronautics. The Secretary flew his blue and white flag and received all honors and ceremony customary on a dignified battleship.

The Los Angeles left Lakehurst at 3:40 on a Friday afternoon and, a few minutes after rising, picked up speed, passed over the Barnegat Light at 55 knots or approximately 60 miles an hour, with only four of her five engines running. Her action was steady and even, without vibration, giving passengers the sensation of riding in a Pullman car over a fabulously smooth roadbed. Admiral Moffett seated himself in the passenger car and stayed there. "On a trip to Bermuda," said he, "one should take it easy, for everyone goes there for a vacation. However, I am fortunate enough to be on this ship and will make the trip probably in twelve hours and can get back to Washington Sunday night, having lost only one day at my desk and having two in Bermuda. This is a forerunner of what anyone may expect to enjoy in a few years.

Small tables between the seats in the passenger car were loaded with roast beef, spaghetti, Navy beans. No smoking and no throwing of anything overboard were almost the only severities to be endured. But when the Gulf was reached, the air grew bumpy, and fog was replaced by warm drizzling rain, changing to a downpour when the islands were approached. The Los Angeles had passed through fog and rain without difficulty, but when the port of Hamilton was actually sighted at 4:45 on Saturday morning, she was water-logged and very heavy. The S.S. Patoka, with the U. S. Consul at Hamilton and many Island officials on board, was in harbor carrying its gigantic mooring mast. The former Navy tanker passed into the open sea to make mooring easier. But heavy winds complicated the problem of mooring, so that, after five hours' hovering flight, it was decided to return without an attempt. The mail was dropped in the Governor's gardens, while disappointed thousands waved goodbye to the airborne visitor.

Fog on the return journey, with constant requests for compass directions, did not hinder the Los Angeles from keeping up a steady clip of 50 miles an hour or so; and, at 12:36 on Sunday morning, the great airship was back at Lakehurst.