On an Akron Catwalk

Mechanic Paul F. Kassay, tall and blond, learned to like the new workman who had been placed alongside him in the great Goodyear-Zeppelin dirigible dock at Akron, Ohio. This newcomer was of Hungarian descent and could understand Kassay's native Magyar. He, too, had "certain ideas" about this business of the Navy's new dirigible, Akron, largest in the world, which they and hundreds of others were building. High on the catwalks, just under the dome of the dock (which is so enormous that rainfall sometimes occurs inside), was an excellent place to talk privately while innumerable rivets were being driven into the framework of the Akron.

One day Mechanic Kassay let his friend into a secret: the Akron would never take the air. Kassay would see to that; he had his own reasons. See how simple: you spit between the sections that are to be riveted --so. In the cold up here, the spittle freezes--but the riveter cannot see because it looks silvery, like the duralumin, so he drives his rivet in. Then next June when they launch the ship, the warm air will thaw the spittle, the rivet will be loose. Soon something may happen. . . .

"But we may not have to wait for that to happen," Kassay whispered. "I am going to get into the control room . . . oxalic acid . . . she may never leave the ground. . . ."

Last week a group of men quietly laid hold of Mechanic Kassay. Among them he recognized his "friend"--revealed as an agent of the U. S. Department of Justice. Kassay was jailed, charged with criminal syndicalism, on the strength of the story of the Department of Justice agent as retold above. Kassay was said to have described himself as a Communist, a former captain in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He denied both of these allegations, denied the sabotage, spoke of a "frame-up."

Much was made of the suggestion that Kassay was working in league with others, all directed by Soviet Russia. But both Navy Department and Department of Justice disposed of him as a "fanatic." Lieut. Thomas G. W. Settle, naval aircraft inspector, and Dr. Karl Arnstein, famed chief engineer & vice president of Good-year-Zeppelin, stated that any harm Kas- say might have attempted would be rectified by their rigid system of inspection.

Flights & Flyers

Udet. Captains Ernst Udet and Gunther Plueschow shared the honor of being Germany's foremost airmen. Last month Capt. Plueschow died in a crash in South America (TIME, Feb. 9). Last week Germany came very close to losing her other idol. Having completed a motion picture job in Tanganyika, Africa, Capt. Udet headed back to Europe. Approaching Khartoum he was forced down in the miasmal Sudanese swamps. Luck was with him; he found and made a landing on one of the swamps' few patches of hard ground. There, days later, Capt. Campbell Black found him, was able to land beside him.

In the War, Ernst Udet was an ace second only to famed Baron von Richthofen. An Iron Cross man and squadron com-mander at the age of 22, he was credited with bringing down 62 Allied planes-by himself. Lately he has devoted himself to cinema, was featured as the flyer in Ufa's The White Hell of Pitz Palu.

Maddalena. Nothing could have been more commonplace to three men in a sea plane that started a routine flight from Milan to Rome last week. All of them had crossed the South Atlantic with General Italo Balbo's roaring Triads (TIME, Jan. 19). Col. Umberto Maddalena, at the controls, was Italy's most decorated airman, most famed next to Balbo. He it was who, scouring the Arctic wastes in 1928, first sighted General Umberto Nobile and his party from the wrecked dirigible Italia, stranded on the ice near Spitsbergen. Sitting behind Col. Madda lena in the seaplane last week was Capt. Fausto Cecconi, 26, former co-holder with Maddalena of two flying records. With their companion, Lieut. Giuseppe Da-monte, they were going to Rome to try and regain their non-refueling endurance and distance records from the French, who had just wrested them away with a 76-hr, flight. Over the Mediterranean not far from Pisa, the plane's propeller snapped. Flailing blades ripped through the cockpit, slashed the fuselage in two. One man tried to jump as the plane dove. But his parachute was caught in a strut, he went to death with his mates.*

To Horse Island. Among the 26 missing from the sealer Viking which sank after an explosion off Horse Island, N. F. last fortnight (TIME, Mar. 23) were a daring young film-maker named Varick Frissell of Manhattan and his photographer, Arthur G. Penrod. Forlorn though the hope that they might still be alive, Frissell's father, Dr. Lewis Fox Frissell, last week persuaded famed Pilot Bernt Balchen to fly in search of them, in com-pany with his friend F. Merion Cooper and Pilot Randy Enslow. Through weather nearly impassable, Pilot Balchen pushed a Sikorsky amphibion as far as Corner Brook, N. F., about 500 mi. short of the goal. There he had to wait for a special train to arrive with more fuel. There he was passed by crack Pilot Robert H. Fogg, flying an open biplane with a Paramount cameraman. Pilot Fogg (who, like Balchen, was one of the few pilots to reach Greenly Island and the stranded air- plane Bremen three years ago) circled Horse Island while his companion photographed the icebound rescue ships carrying the 127 survivors. He tried to land, wrecked the plane's undercarriage.

Kiwi

The "feel"' of the plane, basic requisite of flying, is usually imparted to beginners by sending them up in a dual-control plane with an instructor. Last week at Glenn Curtiss airport, N. Y. a new method was introduced, to give students the ''feel" by letting them "fly solo" before leaving the ground. Equipment used: i) a glider mounted to swing in the blast of a fan; 2) an almost wingless "kiwi" or taxiplane which scoots around the field but cannot rise and which has strong hoops in front to protect the tyro if he noses over; 3) an ordinary glider; 4) a low-powered training plane.

This "solo system," devised by Lieut. George Rockwell, Wartime Army instructor, is an elaboration of the old Bleriot method.

God v. Pilot (Cont'd.)

No airline wants its passengers to think they are threatened by unavoidable accidents. But when a crash occurs and a damage suit results, the airline sometimes pleads Act of God. The underlying question: Is an unforeseen accident necessarily unforeseeable? Last fortnight saw two developments in the dispute of "God v. Pilot" (TIME, Jan. 19).

Aeropostale. In 1928 a plane of money-losing Compagnie Generale Aeropostale carrying a passenger from Morocco to Toulouse, flew into a severe storm over Spain. The pilot was pitched out of his cockpit and fell to death. The pilotless plane crashed, killing the passenger. Heirs sued for $20,000. Aeropostale argued that every precaution had been taken by government officials who inspected the planes and gave clearance for each departure. The storm, said the company, was clearly an Act of God. Last fortnight, the court ruled in favor of Aeropostale. Insisting that the company must take storms into consideration, the plaintiffs appealed.

Curtiss. Two months ago an Act-of-God decision in favor of Curtiss Flying Service was set aside by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in Brooklyn, and a retrial ordered in a $25,000 damage suit. Last fortnight a jury again opined that the Curtiss pilot was not blamable for a fatal crash resulting from an air bump.

*Sweden's Capt. Einar-Paal Lundborg, actual rescuer of Nobile, was killed in a crash last month (TIME, Feb. 9).

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