Prophet With Honor

Seldom have so many famed flyers gathered together as in a banquet room of Manhattan's Hotel Roosevelt one night last week. There were bronzed "Lon" Yancey, meek-looking Clarence Chamberlin, debonair Col. Fitzmaurice and his rescuer, sturdy Bernt Balchen, nearly bursting out of a tight dinner jacket. There were beauteous Ruth Elder Camp, mop-headed Amelia Earhart Putnam, and the recluse Lindbergh; Armand Loti of the Yellow Bird who came from France to be present that night; Rear Admiral Byrd, Frank Courtney, Harry Connor. (Brock & Schlee, too, would have been there had they not been forced down flying from Detroit to Manhattan.) They were assembled not to be honored, but to honor belatedly Dr. James Henry ("Doc") Kimball of the New York office of the U. S. Weather Bureau, who has never flown but who is largely responsible for the success of every oceanic flight starting from the Atlantic coast.

Gentle, grey-haired, looking somewhat older than his 57 years, Dr. Kimball was literally "overwhelmed," moved nearly to tears by the demonstration. He made a speech reviewing the critical stages of the flights he had helped to prepare "partly for the thrill I get out of them." Also he said: "A greatly improved weather map is sorely needed [before scheduled trans-Atlantic flight can be considered]. Inadequacy of information, not unsatisfactory weather, is often the reason for postponed flights. Unknown weather is bad weather when the only hope of success lies in full recognition of all hazards, including weather. . .

"And now for a dream--Byrd whispered it to me before the tumult had subsided on his return from Paris; I've heard it from each of you, and yesterday Lindbergh and I toyed with it--a crossing at 25,000 feet; far above an unfriendly ocean; at 300 miles an hour; no fog, no ice. and a glorious sky overhead--well, not yet, but we hope, soon!" The flyers who lauded Dr. Kimball were well aware that his service to them was no simple business of glancing at the sky, reading a barometer and delivering a glib verdict of "go" or "stay." He dislikes the notion that he issues categorical decisions, or that he functions as an official transatlantic ship despatcher. All that he will undertake is to inform a waiting flyer when he may expect "reasonably favorable conditions" on his projected course. And that alone means long, laborious work for Dr. Kimball in the Weather Bureau offices atop the Whitehall Building at the lower tip of Manhattan Island. It means working all night, making a weather map from radioed reports received from ships at sea, that a flyer hoping to take off at dawn may have last-minute information. For this service, in addition to his regular duties to marine navigation, Dr. Kimball is compensated by a salary of about $4,000 per year, plus vicarious joy in the achieve ments of his "boys and girls."

Dr. Kimball's magnum opus is to be a complete daily weather map of the ocean -- some day of the upper air. To the completion of that task he is as devoted as a painter to an unfinished canvas. That, he says, is why he has never flown. "I don't believe I ever will. I want to see this work through. I see no reason I should take the extra chance."

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