Winging

If the Man in the Moon has sharp eyes, he may have noticed little specks moving through the gray-green scum of Earth's land, sea and inner atmosphere--specks far fleeter than the ones he had noticed in previous centuries crawling over the wide watery expanses; specks that now flit in a few days' time from sea to sea, from continent to continent.

Every year man moves more daringly through the air, developing his wings for the sake of adventure, commerce, faster postal services. Last week, besides the activities of pole-flyers (see SCIENCE), four major flights were winging.

Los Angeles. Slowly, cautiously, like the groundhog in February, the great Los Angeles thrust her monstrous grey stern-snout out of the hangar at Lakehurst, N. J. Sniffs of the wind augured well for several days aloft. The motors roared and rumbled, the huge celestial torpedo pushed up for her first extended trip since last July. Heading southeast, Captain George W. Steele Jr. guided her out over Barnegat Bay, then down to Atlantic City and to Cape May through bumpy air seas. Over Barnegat Lighthouse some internal wires had snapped; a waterline had burst, from one of the steam-condensers (to recover water from a motor's cooling jacket). Back put the Los Angeles, over Philadelphia, Camden, Bristol--back to the snug, safe hangar for further conditioning and study, after being in the air eight hours, going 300 miles.

Spaniards. Rangoon, Burma; then Bangkok, Siam; then Saigon and Hanoi, French Indo-China, strained their eyes in turn, and in turn beheld Captains Loriga and Gonzalez-Gallarza who had come all the way from their native Spain on a hopping-trip from Madrid in two planes. They were to keep hopping until they reached Manila in the Philippines. They received word that in crossing Japan the military authorities would not allow them to land on the Island of Formosa. But Japan's warning proved unnecessary. Landing at Macao, Asiatic Portugal, one flyer struck a tree; his comrade's plane was missing. Companions in another plane had been confounded crossing the turbulent air-passages of hot Arabia, had descended in a sandstorm, been rescued after exposure to fierce hunger and thirst.

Dane. Ahead of the Spaniards flew bold Lieutenant Botved of Denmark, bent on flying from Copenhagen to Tokyo. Late despatches reported him safe some 150 miles south of Shanghai.

Portuguese. Out of Lisbon harbor droned a big Portugese naval plane. The heart of old Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), who used to call international pilots' councils and who sent Gomez and Fernandez to feel their way down to and around the terrible tip of unknown Africa, would have swelled with pride to see Lieutenants Moreira and Neves-Terriera head out over the broad Atlantic for the Madeira Islands, some 800 miles away. . . . Nightfall did not find them in Funchal. Their plane had pitched to the sea, as if crippled, but it was not crippled--only out of gas. And they were hard by the shores of Porto Santo.

In addition to these flights already observed, the Man in the Moon is promised much diversion during the summer months.

Fonck. Last week burly little Captain Rene Fonck of France, ace of Allied aces, Inspector General of French Aviation, strode down a gangplank in Manhattan and hurried out to Westbury, L. I., to fire questions at Engineer Igor Sikorsky of Russia. The scene of their talk was the Sikorsky airplane factory. The subject was a monster Sikorsky biplane, the S-35, which was being equipped with three 425 h.p. Gnome-Rhone Jupiter motors specially selected abroad and shipped here by Fonck to drive him, without pausing, from Long Island to Paris next autumn in an effort to win a standing prize of $25,000.* A preliminary non-stop flight, Long Island to Halifax and back, was scheduled for early July.

Udet. From Germany came despatches last week saying that a onetime enemy of Fonck's, Ernst hydroplane can fly anywhere unaided, he would set out from Rome in July or August with another officer, a mechanic and a hydroplane and fly completely around the world, touching every continent, spanning every ocean, following a course of some 80,000 miles (thrice the earth's equatorial girth), along which he would have no advance preparations made except fuel depots in out-of-the-way places.

Centurione. The Marquis of Centurione (Italian) announced last month that, flying the seaplane Cosulich I built by the Cosulich Steamship Co., with three Isotta-Fraschini motors, he would attempt a 30,000-mile, four-continent flight this summer--Italy to Africa, to South America, to Panama, to Cuba, to the U. S., to Newfoundland, to the Azores, to Italy.

Litchfield Trophy

With a dozen airplanes capering and cavorting around them, nine big rubber balls floated aloft into the northeast heavens from the Little Rock, Ark., airport. They were entries in the annual national elimination balloon race for the Litchfield Trophy, the winners of which will represent the U. S. in the annual international races to be held next month in Belgium. After the attendant planes had come to earth and the big balls had dwindled out of sight, reports began reaching Little Rock: a balloon too high for identification had sailed over Oil Trough, Ark., 70 mi. away; Lieutenant William A. Gray in the Army balloon 520 had struck trees in the Kentucky mountains; the Detroit had landed in Pike County, Ky. . . . Last to land was the Army balloon S-23, at Mount Holly, N. C. But the winner of the race--for the third successive year--was Ward T. Van Orman, piloting the Goodyear IV. His basket touched earth near Petersburg, Va., 780 miles from Little Rock. Runner-up: Pilot John A. Boettner of the Akron N. A. A; 570 miles to Welch, W. Va,

*Offered by Hotelman Raymond Orteig of Manhattan, but never competed for. The North Atlantic has been crossed only twice by heavier-than-air craft: 'in 1919, by British airmen, Alcock and Brown, flying from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Ireland, and by Scott flying from East Fortune, Scotland, to Mineola, N. Y.