Flights, Fliers

All speed records between London and Paris were broken last week by an Imperial Airways liner: miles, 230; time, 80 minutes.

Van Lear Black owns the famous Sunpapers of Baltimore. Adventurous Englishman, purser of a blockade running munitions freighter during the great submarine war, a navigator himself, he took as naturally to the air as he had to the sea. May will see his three-motored Fokker upward and outward bound from Amsterdam, Holland, for Cape Town, then back to Cairo, then, if weather permits, to India and to Hong Kong. Last year handsome, aristocratic Mr. Black flew a passenger record, Amsterdam to Java, 20,000 miles.

Clarence Duncan Chamberlain, New York-to-Berlin flyer, started on a lecture tour of the southern states in a Sperry-Messenger plane last week. He did the first lap through a snowstorm, and will do 5,000 miles in five weeks. His plane has a 26-foot wingspread.

The first woman air mail passenger from New York to San Francisco was Miss Candis Hall, daughter of Myron S. Hall of New York City, who made the journey in 41 hours. She liked it.

Harry Brooks, chief test pilot of the Stout-Ford Airplane Co., carrier of Mrs. Evangeline Lodge Lindbergh to Mexico, plunged into the sea off the coast of Melbourne, Fla., in a "flivver" plane of his own design. The wreckage was found afloat next day, but of Pilot Brooks there was no trace. He had hoped to see the day when his air "flivvers" would be in the hands of millions.

Pierre Fronval looped 1,111 consecutive, uninterrupted loops, in 4 hrs. 56 min. at Velizy airdrome outside Paris. Each loop was followed by an official hammer blow delivered by an Aero Club representative upon a wooden table. A French notary legalized the record by stamping the Republic's seal upon the table. When the U. S. record of 1,093 loops in six hours was passed the crowd cheered as Frenchmen cheer champions. A Hispano-Suiza motor, the make used by Costes and Lebrix, and a Morane plane endured the strain.