Brunswick to Brazil

Brunswick to Brazil

A boy who wanted to be a musician disappeared in the wilds of sea and mountains between Brunswick, Ga., and Rio de Janeiro. In his youth in Rochester, Paul Redfern studied music, dreaming of one day becoming a great figure in the world of opera & orchestra. At the threshold of his career he failed to obtain an expected orchestra engagement and turned from flutes to flying ships. After a curious itinerant career as a stunt flyer; advertising flyer; flying scout for the Prohibition service; small airport proprietor; he sought backing for a New York-to-Paris flight this year. He failed. Soon he appeared in Brunswick, Ga. To the merchants of that town he put his proposition. He would fly a plane alone to Rio de Janeiro, 4,600 miles, farther than any man had flown without touching the world. The merchants accepted, financed a Stinson Detroiter monoplane, similar to the plane in which Edward F. Schlee and William S.

Brock set out to fly around the globe.

To Brunswick, Ga., came Rev. W. K. C. Redfern, Baptist minister and dean of Benedict's College, Negro institution, at Columbia, S. C. He is Paul Redfern's father, and together they mapped the course down the Caribbean Sea to Porto Rico, over the Windward Islands to British Guiana in South America, south to Brazil, across Brazil to Rio. He helped 108-lb. Paul load into the Port of Brunswick sandwiches, food, coffee, a rifle and cartridges, fishing tackle, mosquito nets, quinine, light boots, knives, signal flares, rubber life raft. These were to save his life if he landed in the jungle or in the sea.

Down the beach sands at Brunswick, Ga., the plane started. It roared, rushed along, stopped. It was wheeled back and tried again. This time it cleared the sand, mounted easily and soon was a narrowing speck to the southward.

Hours later came a vagrant radio report, unconfirmed, that Flyer Redfern had been sighted by a steamer 300 miles east of the Bahama Islands, on his course and about 500 miles out. After that, silence.

Experts were pessimistic for his life. Paul Redfern was flying for the most part over unfrequented seas; some of the mountains and jungle had not been penetrated by explorers. He had no radio. Weather charts indicated unfavorable winds. Under the weather conditions it was figured he could not possibly reach Rio on his gasoline supply. Sixty hours after his take-off Redfern had not been heard from. His gasoline supply must have been exhausted. He was down somewhere. Just before he left he said: "Don't lose hope for my return for at least six months or more."

Levine to London

To Le Bourget flying field, near Paris, ventured Charles A. Levine, stubby, irascible transatlantic flyer. There he bade mechanics start the motor of his plane, the Columbia. When they obeyed, thinking he wished to taxi about the field for amusement, Charles A. Levine got in all by himself, reared along the runway, tilted the wings, jolted clumsily into the air, swooped dangerously over the airdrome, then set out over the Channel for England.

A few hours later, people at Croydon Field, near London, craned upward at an extraordinary spectacle. They saw a big plane rocking and careening, dipping and swerving, as it four times circled the buildings in irregular fashion, like a monkey circling a vinegar-jug. Members of the Flying Force saw tragedy in the wabbling comedy above them in the air. An ambulance trundled out onto the field, men stood in tense postures. Finally Charles A. Levine landed in lopsided fashion with a great bounce. Officials at the field hurried to congratulate him, knowing well how much courage is required for an amateur to fly alone. Then they asked the little man for passport, baggage. He had neither.

His reason for the flight to England remained mysterious after further questioning. But communication with Maurice Drouhin, French airman engaged to pilot the Columbia across the Atlantic, shed some light. Said he: "I have only had 20,000 francs ($800) of my two months' pay of 100,000 francs ($4,000). I am not going to chase Levine to London because if I saw him I would feel like killing him and then the English would put me in jail. But I am going to see if I can't seize the Columbia in London."

Also it appeared that two swift French planes had left Le Bourget Field in an unsuccessful effort to overtake Charles A. Levine and herd him back to France.

The prelude to this latest Levine-Drouhin squabble occurred when Charles A. Levine told his pilot to run him down to Deauville for the races. Drouhin answered brusquely that he had been engaged to fly the Atlantic, that he was "no taxi driver," that he had no inclinations to see the races at Deauville.

* The Pride of Detroit hopes to break the present around-the-world record by ten days. In 1926 Linton Wells and Edward Evans set out from New York, crossed the ocean in the Aquitania; hopped across Siberia by airplane; by train, plane and ship through Manchuria to Japan; by the Empress of Asia across the Pacific to Vic- toria, B. C.; and thence to New York by airplane. They took 28 days, 14 hours and 30 minutes.