Shannon Survey

Down upon Baldonnel Airdrome at Dublin in the Irish Free State one noon last week slid a large airplane from England. Out of it stepped three international aviation bigwigs--Pan American Airways' President Juan Terry Trippe, Vice President John C. Cooper and Imperial Airways' Managing Director G. E. Woods-Humphrey. Far more interesting to the goggling gossoons and colleens was the fourth member of the party--a slim, gangling, tousle-haired man whom they readily recognized as Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh.

Though the No. 1 U. S. flyer has moved himself & family from his native land, he has retained his intense interest in U. S. aviation. President Jack Frye of Transcontinental & Western Air ("The Lindbergh Line") has lately received many a long letter from the taciturn Colonel about new equipment. Pan American Airways, the other line for which Colonel Lindbergh is technical advisor, has also relied steadily on his aid. Therefore last week, when Pan American's suave President Trippe landed in England after flying all the way from New York via Asia, Colonel Lindbergh was easily persuaded to come out of hiding near Sevenoaks, Kent, for a junket to Ireland to examine possible sites on the west coast for a transatlantic air terminal.

After luncheon and a conference with the Irish Free State's army chief of staff, Major General Michael Brennan, Colonel Lindbergh & friends flew to Limerick, where they made an aerial survey of the commercial air base now abuilding at Rynanna on the Clare side of the River Shannon. That night they slept at the remote, rustic Adare Hotel, whose proprietor blandly refused to admit Colonel Lindbergh's presence. Next day, eager newshawks were kept at a distance by government officials, but spied the Colonel making copious notes while examining possible base sites by automobile on the Limerick side of the Shannon. That night, in Dublin Castle, the Lindbergh party broke bread with President Eamon de Valera, his Cabinet, and American Minister Alvin Mansfield Owsley.* Next day, before buzzing back to seclusion, Colonel Lindbergh took President de Valera for his first flight.

Now that Pan American's Pacific Airway is within one stop of China across the Pacific, the No. 1 U. S. airline is ready to devote its energies to the Atlantic. Last time Pan American's proposed transatlantic service made similar news was in 1933, when Col. & Mrs. Lindbergh made a summerlong, subArctic route survey (TIME, July 31, 1.933). Imperial and Pan American have long had an "understanding" for co-operation on the Atlantic. But Imperial delayed because it lacked equipment capable of flying an ocean. This lack is no more. Into service month ago in the Mediterranean went the Canopus, first of 28 18-ton, four-motored flying boats now nearing completion at England's Short Brothers plant. Most of these will fly Imperial's Australian and African runs. Others will be outfitted for the proposed jumps between Bermuda and the U. S. And at least two are to be stripped of all interior fittings to make way for huge gas tanks, fitting the planes for experimental hops across the 2,000 miles of Atlantic between the River Shannon and Newfoundland.

*Day before, President de Valera and Minister Owsley had talked briefly with the man whose mail contracts will be the lifeblood of any transatlantic airline--U. S. Postmaster General James A. Farley, in Ireland to visit his family home. The Lindbergh party did not encounter him.

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