New York To Berlin

One was a wiry, serious-looking man of 32--Charles Duncan Chamberlin--a product of one of Iowa's many Main Streets, in the town of Denison. Early in life he developed a passion for tinkering with automobile engines. He studied electrical engineering at Iowa State University. He worked in a jewelry store. He married a pretty girl named Wilda Bogert. He went into aviation through the path traveled by so many young pilots--training in the Army during Wartime, barnstorming, stunt flying. Then he got a backer and a superbly designed Wright-Bellanca monoplane. He shattered the endurance record by remaining in the air (with chunky Bert Acosta) for 51 hours. He was ready to conquer the Atlantic long before Captain Charles Augustus Lindbergh came out of the West, but bickerings disturbed his camp.

The other was a stocky Jew of 30--Charles A. Levine--an industrialist of Brooklyn. He began his business career by selling second-hand automobiles. He made several million dollars by salvaging ammunition after the War. He met his wife when she won a Brooklyn beauty contest. Something romantic in him, as well as shrewd business acumen, prompted him to affiliate himself with aviation manufacturing. The U. S. Government refused to grant him an air mail contract, criticized his record. Aviators said he was trying to commercialize a sport, when financial squabbles delayed Chamberlin's flight. Levine had to do something adventurous to vindicate himself.

Secretly, in a Long Island hotel on the night before the takeoff, Levine planned to make the flight with Chamberlin. He wrote a letter to his wife telling why; he made his will disposing of a $5,000,000 estate.

At 6:05 a. m. he amazed the crowd at Roosevelt Field and caused his wife to swoon, when he quietly climbed into the Columbia's cockpit beside Chamberlin and was off for somewhere in Europe. Chamberlin followed Captain Lindbergh's general route from Long Island to Newfoundland and thence across the Atlantic.

Some 340 miles west of Land's End, England, Chamberlin and Levine circled around the Cunarder Mauretaytia, only 80 minutes after the liner had passed the U. S. cruiser Memphis, which was carrying Captain Lindbergh to Washington.

With the setting of the sun, the lemon-colored wings of the Columbia were seen over Plymouth, England. Then the favoring winds seemed to point to Germany; so Chamberlin steered diagonally across the English Channel, Belgium and Holland. At dawn, with the gasoline supply exhausted, Chamberlin made a successful landing at Eisleben, Germany, 110 miles went of Berlin. He had flown 3,905 miles in 42 hours, 32 minutes --exceeding in distance, but not in speed, Captain Lindbergh's non-stop flight of 3,610 miles in 33 hours, 29 minutes.

Revived with gasoline, the Columbia set out for Berlin where a gigantic welcome was in store. But fortune decreed an unromantic end. Off the course, lost in a fog, developing engine trouble--due perhaps to the new brand of gasoline--the Columbia smashed its propeller while making a forced landing in a muddy field near Kottbus, 70 miles southwest of Berlin. To Chamberlin and Levine, the good burgomaster of Kottbus offered beer.