'Untin' Bowler

The air is not yet so thickly filled but that it can be used as a publicity medium by people with money enough to "pioneer" it. Last spring Publisher Joseph Medill Patterson of the Chicago Tribune; New York Daily News and nickel-weekly Liberty, rode around the Caribbean in a Sikorsky christened Liberty for benefit of press.* Last week Mr. Patterson's cousin-partner, Robert Rutherford McCormick, sent another Sikorsky from Chicago northeastward. This plane was supposed to fly a Great Circle course to Berlin for the glory of the Chicago Tribune ("world's greatest newspaper"), whose aviation editor, 200-lb. Robert Wood, went aboard as a passenger. The McCormick ship was named, oddly, the 'Untin' Bowler, partly because a hunting bowler hat is supposed to protect its wearer if he falls, and partly (said Chicagoans) because of a McCormick family joke about a child, a bowler hat and a pressing necessity. The Tribune started a prize contest, $100 for the best guess why the plane was named 'Untin' Bowler.

Not unlike a small boy was Publisher McCormick when, having been "sold" the 'Untin' Bowler stunt, he found he could not obtain the services of Pilot Carl Ben Eielson, most experienced arctic air navigator alive (Wilkins expeditions). Pilot Eielson, engaged by Aviation Corp., was about to depart for Alaska when Mr. McCormick telephoned to Manhattan from Chicago to persuade, demand, then storm because he could not have his way.

Pilot Parker W. ("Shorty") Cramer, 33, was the man who initiated the Chicago-to-Berlin idea. He has been arguing for such a flight for five years. Last year he persuaded Rockford, Ill. boosters to finance him on a trip with Bert Hassell in the Greater Rockford. They got as far as stormy Greenland (TIME, Sept. 10). Two months ago Cramer backed Aviation Editor Wood into a Chicago hotel room and talked sport, adventure, glory at him. The trip would be safe and sure. They would fly from Chicago to Milwaukee, make a courteous gesture to Leif Ericsson's statue there, go across Canada to Cape Chidley at the northernmost tip of Labrador, skip over water but in sight of land to Cape Walsingham on Baffin Island, jump across Davis Strait to Mt. Evans, Greenland. From Mt. Evans they would cross the Greenland ice cap to Angmagsalik and then over water to Reykjavik, Iceland. From Iceland they would try for Bergen, Norway, stopping at the Faroe or Shetland islands if necessary, and from Bergen to Copenhagen to Berlin. Then they would fly back over the same route to Chicago.

Editor Wood, enthralled, got Publisher McCormick to agree. Failing the services of Pilot Eielson, Cramer suggested tall, bald Pilot Robert H. Cast, 33, whom Mr. McCormick soon commandeered from his friend John Daniel Hertz, onetime Yellow Cab tycoon.

Cramer, Gast and Wood, none of whom could navigate a ship except by dead reckoning, thus set off in the 'Untin' Bowler last week. They landed at Great Whale on Hudson Bay, were held there two days because of bad weather. Next stop was to be Port Burwell, Cape Chidley, Labrador. The silence that ensued left followers of the flight more serious things to ponder than the origin of the name 'Untin' Bowler.

*Publisher Patterson and his daughter, Mrs. Alicia Patterson Simpson, last week passed their tests for pilot licenses.