The Daily Alaska Empire

Aviation Speeds and Soars to New Marks in 1931; Airplanes Are Flown Faster. Farther
By OSCAR LEIDING
(Associated Press Aviation Editor)

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 7.-

Man flew faster, farther and higher in 1931.

The world was encircled and the oceans whipped in spectacular flights while commercial aviation reared itself on stronger foundations.

Hundreds of persons crossed the Atlantic in 1931 by airplane or airship at a cost of nine lives—a record in projects completed, numbers carried and safety—and the Pacific was conquered by airplane.

Hundreds of thousands of persons in the United States patronized scheduled air lines to set up a new high mark for sky travel, while airmail poundage climbed to a loftier peak.

Fiction's fancies were dwarfed by a modest pair, Wiley Post and Harold Gatty, who flew into the east and came out of the west to complete a world journey in eight days, 15 hours and 51 minutes.

Man flew faster in the person of Flight Lieut. G. H. Stainforth, British pilot, who hurtled in a seaplane to a new maximum speed record of 406.69 miles an hour.

Russell Boardman and John Poland captured the world distance mark by flying nonstop 5,011.8 miles from New York to Istanbul, Turkey.

Into Stratosphere
Prof. August Piccard and Charles Kipfer, sealed in an aluminum ball made a balloon voyage into the stratosphere 51,755 feet above the earth, an altitude of nearly 10 miles.

Balked from beating the Post-Gatty time, Clyde Panghorn and Hugh Herndon, Jr., achieved the first nonstop flight from Japan to the United States.

Gen. Italo Balbo added a new touch to ocean flying by leading a squadron of Italian planes across the south Atlantic in formation.

The fever of new exploits was caught by Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, who, with his wife, on a "vacation" trip, blazed the trail from the east coast of the United States upward to the Arctic Circle and down to Japan and China.

Flying Boat
Germany's giant flying boat, the DO-X, flew the south Atlantic; the Graf Zeppelin made three round-trip commercial flights between Germany and Brazil, and Captain Bert Hinkler spanned the ocean in an eastward hop.

Successful nonstop flights over the north Atlantic were made from Newfoundland by Otto Hillig and Holger Hoiriis to Germany and by Capts. Alexander Maygar and George Endres to Hungary.

Lighter-than-air leadership was assumed by the United States on completion of the world's largest airship, the U. S. S. Akron.

Other feats of the year included England's gaining permanent possession of the Schneider trophy and Maj. James H. Doolittle's west to east transcontinental record flight of 11 hours and 16 minutes.