FEAT ACCOMPLISHED

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 84, 6 October 1931, Page 7

FEAT ACCOMPLISHED

AMERICAN AVIATORS JAPAN TO U.S.A., NON-STOP, LANDING GEAR DROPPED (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph— Copyright.) (Received 6th October, 9 a.m.y ,' t VANCOUVER, sth October. At the airport at Wenatchee, Washington, the transpacific flyers, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon,, landed at 7.14 a.m. on Monday, completing their non-stop flight from Japan. The flight took about 41 hours 13. minutes. The flyers dropped tho landing gear of their machine after leaving1 Japan to lighten the load, and when they landed tlio 'plane settled on her belly, tipped on her nose, settled back, and slid along slowly in a cloud of dust, coming to rest on the left wing* The propeller was broken. Herndon. got cut over the left oye. Pangborn said: "Boy, are we glai to get here? Give me a cigarette." A representative of the Japanese newspaper "Asahi" met them with a 25,000 dollar check for tho completion of tho first non-stop flight froni Japan. Pangborn said that they were nearly, to Spokane when they turned back owing to its being too foggy to proceed to Salt Lake City in an attempt to set a world distance record. They; had a hundred gallons of petrol, left. Mrs. Opal Pangborn greeted her son. She was crying when they landed; SAVED BY SKID. The distance is approximately 4600 miles. The aviators said that the. steel skid on the 'plane saved them from ■a wreck on landing. "We were on tho right course all the way, but were awfully sleepy," Pangborn said. . Pangborn was at the controls when they landed, and did most of - tho piloting. "We had good weather for the first thousand miles, and then climbed to 17,000 ■ feet, trying to get over the clouds and hitting real heavy; clouds.'' "At Dutch Harbour on Sunday at daybreak," said Herndon, "ice began to form on the wings as we climbed up and down, but we couldn't get over it. The 'plane was loggy, but we flew on. through, it." "We each snoozed a littlo sitting up in the 'plane," so Pangborn said. Wenatchee is on the Columbia Biver, inland from Seattle over tho Cascade Eange. Dutch Harbour is in the island of Unalaska in tho Aleutian chain of islands off the south-west oif Alaska. Pangborn and Hernden made an unsuccessful attempt to beat Post and Gatty's round-the-world record, and were detained in Japan for flying without a permit.