NEW YORK’S WELCOME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1938, Page 5

NEW YORK’S WELCOME

HOWARD HUGHES & CREW FETED PROCESSION IN BROADWAY. CREDIT GIVEN TO DESIGNERS OF PLANES. By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. NEW YORK, July 16. A decade after this city staged its remarkable reception to Colonel Lindbergh after his solo flight across the Atlantic, it repeated it to Mr Howard Hughes and his crew of four who made a record flight round the world. Moreover, since there are considerably more and taller skyscrapers along Broadway and Fifth Avenue now than there were 10 years ago, there were infinitely more torn bits of paper, ticker tape, etc, poured on to the heads of the aviator and his companions, who, with the mayor, Mr F. H. La Guardia, and Mr Grover Whalen, president of the New York World’s Fair, rode in an open motor-car through the principal thoroughfares. The streets were densely crowded with files of humanity. It was a remarkable spectacle in the traditional New York manner.

Mr Hughes, before the parade began, handed journalists statements, which were practically the same, and the more interesting parts of which were the following:— “We who did the flight are not entitled to particular credit. We are not supermen. If credit is due to anyone it is due to the men who designed and perfected the modern flying machine to its present state of efficiency. If we made a fast flight it is because many young men in the United States went into an engineering school, worked hard at the drafting- tables, and designed a fast aeroplane and navigation and radio equipment which would keep this aeroplane on its course.

“I estimate that for the total trip we travelled only twenty miles more than the shortest distance between the takeoff and landing points.

“The plane we used is fast because it is the product of over 200,000 hours of engineering efforts. If this flight has done a little to show that American engineers can design and American workmanship build just as fine aeroplanes, engines and aircraft equipment as anyone in the world, and if it should possibly increase the sale of American planes abroad and thus create a few new jobs for American men in the aircraft factories of the United States, then I shall feel well repaid.” The revised official figures for the flight are 91 hours 8 minutes 10 seconds. There are no official figures for the flying time, but it was approximately 71 hours.