On Kill Devil Hill

On a gusty December day in 1903, on the slope of a sand dune on a North Carolina coastal reef, Orville Wright started the tiny engine of a flimsy biplane, crawled aboard the lower wing and lay prone at the crude controls. The machine began to move. Brother Wilbur ran alongside steadying the wing. The ship left the ground, jerkily trod the wind for twelve marvelous seconds, nosed into the sand. A powered airplane had flown.

Last week aging, taciturn Orville Wright, 61, stood beneath a gale-pelted canvas shelter at the same sand dune. Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, to witness the unveiling of a monument to that historic flight. (His brother Wilbur died 20 years ago.) The actual scene of the flight lay a quarter-mile to the north. Sea winds had budged Kill Devil Hill some 50 ft. a year before Army engineers anchored it with hardy grasses and shrubs.

The monument atop the hill, designed by Manhattan Architects Rodgers & Poor, is a 66-ft granite pylon set upon a star-shaped foundation. In cross-section it is triangular, the apex pointing north to where the hill formerly stood. From the apex to the south face is carved a rugged suggestion of swept-back wings. A revolving beacon surmounts the shaft. For the present at least, the beacon will be more of a landmark to mariners than to airmen. The nearest airport is army's Langley Field, 80 mi. north. The nearest airway passes some 200 mi. to the west.

On the south wall of the pylon the names Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright are carved in high letters. Within the base is a memorial room on a wall of which is the inscription:

The long toil of the brave

Is not quenched

In darkness nor hath counting

The cost fretted away

The zeal of their hopes.

O'er the fruitful earth

And athwart the sea hath passed

The light of noble deeds

Unquenchable forever.*

Secretary of War Patrick Jay Hurley accepted the $275,000 monument for the Government. Brigadier General Louis Hermann Bash read a letter from President Hoover, presented the rain-splotched paper to Mr. Wright. Said Mr. Wright: "Thank you." It was his only speech of the day.

Cord v. Cohu (cont'd)

Every airmail contractor in the U. S. shuddered last week as the fight for control of Aviation Corp. became more & more rowdy (TIME. Nov. 21). Whether the operators sided with the management or with Motormaker Errett Lobban Cord, 30% stockholder who was trying to unseat it, the industry was painfully aware of one fact: That the missiles hurled by each side would be picked up by opponents of airmail subsidies, carefully saved until the next Congress convenes, then flung at all air transport.

All but forgotten was the issue upon which hostilities broke--Avco's quiet move to purchase North American Aviation, Inc.--while "ins" and "outs" battled in print for proxies to control a Dec. 21 stockholders' meeting.

In full-page newspaper advertisements Mr. Cord shouted that his accusations of extravagance, speculation, mismanagement, "illegal payments to officers.'' loss of 838,000,000 by the Avco management had gone unanswered. He denied Avco's charge that he had tried to force his Stinson planes upon the company; denied placing "spies" in Avco ranks; admitted losing money on his Century Air Lines (bought by Avco), pleaded that it was a five-month-old venture without benefit of airmail. He flayed the directorate for "railroading" important deals, told stockholders that "if we had not stopped the directors from making the [North American] deal, the control of your company and its money would have passed forever from your hands."

Avco hired Publicists Edward L. Bernays and Bruno & Blythe to combat the Cord propagandists, P. P. Willis & Co. of Chicago, Doremus & Co. of Manhattan. But their replies were less heated. President La Motte Turck Cohu repeated his familiar objections to Mr. Cord. Avco was cannily waiting, hoping that the Cord faction would talk itself into trouble.

Suddenly upon the scene stepped an unexpected figure. John H. Trumbull, the shrewd Yankee merchant who rose from a tiny electrical business in Hartford to be the "flying Governor of Connecticut" and John Coolidge's father-in-law, announced from his Plainville, Conn. home that he had formed a third, "non-partisan" stockholders' committee. He too called for proxies. His committee, said the Governor, was best qualified to judge the merits of the controversy. It included Lessing Julius Rosenwald, potent vice board chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co., William Benson Mayo, onetime chief of Ford aircraft construction. President Howard Coonley of Boston's Walworth Co. (valves), three airline organizers. Promptly Mr. Cord piped up: "Ex-Governor Trumbull was one of the principals in the ... sale of Colonial Airways to the Aviation Corp. . . . His principal associate in this deal, John F. O'Ryan, is an officer and director of the Aviation Corp. and a member of the opposition committee. His new 'Independent.' committee cannot be relied upon to act independently. . . ."

Then two of the breaks awaited by Avco occurred in quick succession. E. F. Hutton & Co., Cord supporters, published a booklet in which President Cohu's name appeared above an Avco balance sheet showing $20,000,000 losses since 1929. Mr. Cohu, who has been president for only six months, started a $1,000,000 libel suit. Also, Avco got and published a letter from President William Green of the A. F. of L. Excerpts: "We are thoroughly convinced that Mr. Cord is hostile to union labor. ... If [he] secures control . . . it will be the purpose of the A. F. of L. to call the attention of members of Congress and the authorities at Washington to the fact that Labor is strongly opposed to Mr. Cord" (for cutting wages on his lines).

Next day Cord's most potent proxy-committeeman, white-haired Speculator Frank Arthur Vanderlip ("The Grey Ghost of Wall Street"), called at the office of young Banker William Averell Harriman, who lately left Avco's chair (TIME, Oct. 31). Presently they summoned Avco's new Chairman Robert Lehman, President Cohu, and Cord's hard-bitten Vice President Lucius Manning. From noon until nearly midnight they argued, bartered. Then, on terms which will doubtless remain secret, they emerged with a truce: the Avco board shall be reduced from 35 to 15. Five will be chosen by the present regime (probably Harriman, Lehman, Cohu, Sherman Fairchild, one other); five will be Cord men (Cord, Manning, Vanderlip, two others). Five will be "independent prominent men mutually agreed upon. . . ." The deal had to be ratified by the December stockholders' meeting. Meanwhile the proxy fight was off. So was the libel suit. Hutton & Co. retracted.

Aviation leaders breathed more easily. The dirty linen was in off the line. The Cord front-line forces vacated their enormous quarters in the Hotel Biltmore, where they had kept three leased telephone wires busy to Chicago and Los Angeles, entrained for Chicago headquarters to meet Mr. Cord, who had been in California. But whatever the truce meant to the principals, it meant nothing to Mr. Trumbull, who announced that his committee would continue to gather proxies.

Flights & Flyers

Hero Control. Since Lindbergh flew to Paris, 16 other planes have reached Europe from the U. S. Nearly as many have roared eastward to disaster; some of them to oblivion, others to be rescued. In the past season alone, six Europe-bound planes dropped into the Atlantic. The Pacific likewise has taken toll. Rescue work is often as dangerous as, usually more costly than the actual flights attempted. Formerly the Department of Commerce only looked on, conceding that many transocean flights were worthwhile experiments. But nowadays, with conventional equipment, they are apt to be merely repetitious. Last week the Department took action. Assistant Secretary for Aeronautics Young announced that hereafter every pilot bound for a foreign country (other than Canada, Mexico, Cuba) must have Department authorization. Authorization will be granted only after the countries to be visited have given their permission, and the Department is satisfied with plane, equipment, ability of pilot. Penalty for violation: loss of license.

Hardy Mrs. Mollison. Current idols of British hero-worshippers are the flying bride-&-groom, James Allan Mollison and Amy Johnson Mollison. Both have made distinguished record flights, notably his London-Cape Town and his recent solo westward across the Atlantic (TIME, Aug. 29). Last week Britons went wild with delight when Mrs. Mollison beat her husband's Cape Town record by 10 1/2 hours, making the flight from Lympne, on the Kent coast, in 4 days, 7 hr. It was an amazing exhibition of stamina. Flying a light Puss Moth named The Desert Cloud she landed only four times, caught three naps, the longest being two hours. She battled with fog over the English Channel, a near-gale over the Mediterranean, sandstorms over the Sahara, torrential rains in Portugese West Africa. At Benguela she was forced down by low oil pressure into a "sea of mud." With improvised tools she made repairs, flew on, thought to powder her nose while crossing Table Mountain at Cape Town. Mrs. Mollison did not do what her husband did at the end of his record flight: crack up in landing.

Again, Wedell-Williams. A yellow-&-red monoplane shot up from Floyd Bennett Field, N. Y. one morning last week, tore through 2,500 mi. of stiff west wind, landed at Burbank, Calif. 12 hr. 22 min. later, more than two hours under the westbound record. The pilot was big-framed Roscoe Turner who wears a swagger uniform of his own design and used to keep a mascot lion. The plane was a Wedell-Williams speedster of the type which made the eastbound record (10 hr. 19 min.) last September.

Self-Help. Over Los Angeles Pilot Paul Munro, flying solo, set the controls of his Curtiss Robin, crawled aft in the cabin, seized a fuel hose dangling from a : nurse ship. He helped himself to 132 gal. of gasoline, returned to his cockpit, flew on. Seven times Pilot Munro repeated the performance, landed only 43 min. short of a new (38 hr.) solo duration record because of a long-distance quarrel with the nurse pilot.

Spirit of Fun was the name of the plane in which Arthur M. Loew, 35, son of the late Showman Marcus Loew and vice president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was touring the world. With him were his attorney, Joseph Rosthal, and Pilot James B. Dickson, oldtime Army flyer. Last week the party was nearing Johannesburg, South Africa, to attend the opening of a new theatre. At Victoria Falls they started to take off from the short runway of an uncompleted airport. Spirit of Fun struck a tree, killed Pilot Dickson, injured Passengers Loew and Rosthal.

*From John Sandys' translation of the Greek Poet Pindar's Isthmian Odes IV & V.

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