LAST LAP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1938, Page 5

LAST LAP

THE HOWARD HUGHES WORLD . FLIGHT DEPARTURE FROM ALASKA FOR NEW YORK. NEW FOUR-DAY RECORD . IN PROSPECT. By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. NEW YORK, July 13. A message from Fairbanks (Alaska) states that the millionaire United States aviatoi" Howard Hughes, who is attempting to break the record for a flight round the world, landed there at 8.18 p.m. (8.5. T. today from Yakutsk (Siberia). He took off again at 9.36 p.m. for New York. i Hughes’s elapsed time at that point was three days 58 minutes, and his flying time was 54 hours 40 minutes. His average speed was 209.4 miles an hour and he has so far travelled 11,330 miles.

NEW YORK REACHED RECORD TIME CUT DOWN BY DAYS. , INCIDENTS ON THE FINAL STAGE. (Reed This Day, 9.20 a.m.) A Minneapolis message states that the aviator, Howard Hughes, landed, hopped off for New York 10.30 a.m. and arrived there at 2.37 p.m. Mr Hughes decided not to land at Winnipeg, for reasons at present not known. He had planned to make only a brief stop for refuelling, probably of not more than 30 minutes, before taking off on the final leg to New York, which he expected to reach in mid-af-ternoon. The weather conditions at Minneapolis were almost perfect. The flight ’from Fairbanks took 12 hours 2 minutes. Mr Hughes said the plane bucked as a result of head winds most of the way from Fairbanks. He said the reason he had not reported for six hours was a failure of the radio transmission, with which he had had intermittent trouble ever since he left Paris. “There are a lot of little things wrong with the plane,” he added, but we will not stay to repair any of them. We believe the ship is ready for the flight to New York and we are going on.” An Old Saybrook, Connecticut, message states that Katherine Hepburn left hurriedly, in an automobile, presumably for New York to greet Mr Hughes, though no announcement was made.

An earlier message, dated from New York yesterday, read: —“At 3 o’clock this morning Hughes reported by radio that he was refuelling at Winnipeg. The message indicated that he had cleared the dangerous McKenzie Mountain range and concluded, ‘All well.’ ”

The record for a flight round the world was held by the late Wiley Post, who, in July, 1933, took 7 days 18 hours 49J-minutes. Hughes hopes to accomplish the flight in four days. His stopping points so far have been Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk (Siberia) and Fairbanks. He announced his intention of making a further stop at Edmonton (Alberta) on the flight across America to New York, his starting point.