HEADED EAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1938, Page 5

HEADED EAST

SUPPOSED ATLANTIC DASH IN SMALL AND OVERLOADED' PLANE AMERICAN PILOT CAUSES SENSATION By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. NEW YORK, July 18. New Yorkers have had an aviation mystery. They have been amazed to learn that Douglas Corrigan, aged 31, a transport pilot, flying a nine-year-old single-motored Curtis Roban machine, flew non-stop from, Los Angeles to New York and was attempting a further non-stop—of necessity—flight to England in an unlicensed attempt to emulate Colonel Lindbergh, whose plane, Spirit of St Louis, Corrigan helped to assemble before its historic flight 10 years ago. Corrigan’s plane, which carries neither radio nor safety devices, arrived unheralded at New York yesterday week, when excitement was running high over the departure of Howard Hughes on his round-the-world flight.

It was not until next day that Corrigan calmly announced he had flown non-stop from Los Angeles, in 27 hours 50 minutes as a holiday jaunt, causing aviators to gasp, since such a flight is regarded as an achievement even by a modern plane and little short of a miracle by Corrigan’s machine, which is so overladen with petrol tanks that the pilot cannot see out of the cockpit in front, but must flip the machine on to its side in order to make observations from the cabin windows. An even greater gasp went up at 5.17 a.m. on Sunday, when Corrigan took aboard 320 gallons of petrol, an estimated 40-hours supply, hopped off and vanished due east instead of west. It was then learned that he had unsuccessfully applied for a permit to fly to Ireland last year and had long cherished an ambition to fly across the Atlantic. His friends, however, insisted that he had no such intention when he hopped off. They contended that he was merely making for Los Angeles, pointing out that it is not uncommon on westward flights to take off eastward from New York, and later to circle round. But, when the day passed without further reports concerned Corrigan’s whereabouts, the trans-Atlantic flight theory gained many converts. The Corrigan mystery has become a minor newspaper sensation. He was still not reported at 3 a.m. today. OCEAN CROSSED CORRIGAN’S REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT. ARRIVAL AT BALDONNEL. (Recd This Day, 9.50 a.m.) LONDON, July 18. The American airman Douglas Corrigan arrived at Baldonnel Aerodrome, after a flight across the Atlantic, in a nine year old machine. His time was 28J hours.