Bellanca's Secret

Giuseppe M. Bellanca has a secret. In his factory at New Castle, Del., is a big new plane about which only the following details were rumored last week: It has two Pratt & Whitney Wasp motors mounted tandem in the nose, one driving an ordinary tractor propeller, the other driving a shaft connected to a pusher propeller at the rear end. The tail of the plane is held out behind this rear propeller by two outriggers from the wings. Out of the Bellanca secrecy has issued this rumor: The plane is being built for Shirley J. Short, oldtime air mail pilot, 1926 Harmon Trophyist. Backed by the Chicago Daily News, he will try for a standing prize of $25,000 for the first non-stop flight from Seattle to Tokyo.

Two other planes, about which there was no secret, were in the news last week:

1) The Sikorsky biplane, Ville de Paris, built in 1927 for Captain Rene Fonck's intended flight to Paris and lately bought by American International Airways, would, it was promised, undertake a flight from some U. S. airport to Santiago, Chile. Objects: the world's non-stop flight record, Pan-American friendship.

2) A Bernard monoplane arrived in Manhattan with its pilot Rene LeFevre on the Leviathan, to attempt the New York-to-Paris flight.