Again, von Gronau

A long-shanked German burgher with thinning blond hair, blue eyes red-rimmed by fatigue, lounged in Montreal's Mount Royal Hotel one evening last week, toying dully with a glass of beer. He wished the newsmen ranged about him would quit trying to make him a hero. He wished they would not refer to his arrival that day by flying boat from Germany as a "transatlantic flight." He wished they would not ask him lor the101st time if the route via Iceland and Greenland, which he had surveyed thrice in three years, were "feasible." Above all he wished they would leave so he might go to bed. As if to persuade them that he really was not worth so much fuss, he said:

"I guess I'm getting old. . . . Yes--I lack nerve. Flying over the Greenland ice cap this year, ... as I looked down on it, I found myself getting afraid. When I came across there before it didn't bother me a bit." Then Capt. Wolfgang von Gronau rose, clicked his heels, bowed his visitors out, went to sleep while Montreal Teutons waited hopefully to toast him at a midnight supper.

In most respects Capt. von Gronau's latest passage resembled those of 1930 (Chicago via New York Harbor) and 1931 (Chicago via Canada). All originated at List, on the North Sea Island of Sylt, where once was one of the world's biggest oyster farms and where now is the seaplane port of a commercial aviation school of which Capt. von Gronau is chief. All three flights were made in tandem-motored Dornier Wai flying boats. In 1930 it was a five-year-old craft which Amundsen had used in the Arctic and which now rests in a Munich museum. This year and last it was a newer ship, named Groenland-Wal( Greenland Whale). On each flight Capt. von Gronau took a crew of three from his school. Students Franz Hack and Fritz Albrecht as mechanic and radioman made all three flights; this year Teacher Ghert von Roth replaced Student Eduard Zimmer as copilot. All flights were characterized by methodical planning, absence of publicity. The first crossing took nine days; last week's, five.

Most important difference was that while Capt. von Gronau had to slip furtively westward from Iceland in 1930 without even confiding his destination to his wife or crew, for fear his government would forbid the venture, he now has government sponsorship for surveying the intercontinental route.

From Montreal last week the Groenland-Wal flew to Ottawa, headed toward Detroit. She arrived there at the end of a towrope after being forced down on Lake St. Clair by a broken pump. After visiting Chicago, the ship's next destination was the Pacific Coast. Despite some-what half-hearted denials by Capt. von Gronau, it appeared certain that he would carry on along the approximate route flown last year by the Lindberghs from Alaska to Siberia, the Kuvile Islands, Tokyo, that he would continue around the world to home.

For airplane passage between New York and Europe he saw little immediate future; steamships are too fast. His hopes lie in developing a direct mail service from Europe through Canada and northern U. S. to the Pacific Coast and the Orient.

Wolfgang von Gronau, 39, is much less a "flyer," in the romantic sense of the word, than an aerial mariner, stolid, painstaking, plodding. He did not want to become a pilot. His lack of interest in aviation became definite fear when his brother, a War aviator, was shot down and killed. But shortly after that when he was transferred from the navy to the air service, he had to go. At first he tried to deceive his mother by telling her he was to go aboard a Zeppelin, which was supposed to be safer than an airplane. But when one Zeppelin after another was brought down in flames, he had to calm her by admitting he was a plane pilot.

Twice von Gronau was shot down unhurt. He was ultimately promoted to a safe headquarters job. After the War he returned to East Prussia to farm the lands of his father. General Hans H. K. von Gronau, Commander of the 41st Reserve Corps at the Battle of the Marne. Under the drudgery of farming he found himself wanting to get into the air again. He hired a manager for the farm, a plane for himself, began to pile up hours. After operating a small school of his own, he got himself appointed director of the government-subsidized Fliegerschule at Warnemeunde, on the Baltic, sunk his capital into it, won such fame for it that pilots of other European countries came for advanced training on seaplanes and flying boats.

He lives at Warnemeunde with his wife Eisner, and three children, Marie Louise, 12, Hans Albert, 10, Hans Joachim, 3. When badgered by newsmen after her husband's flights, Frau von Gronau has her telephone disconnected.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.