AMAZING ADVENTURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1938, Page 5

AMAZING ADVENTURE

NINE-YEARIOLD AIRCRAFT USED.

Douglas Corrigah, the 31-year-old Californian airman, who flew the Atlantic to Ireland in 28 hours 13 minutes, in “mistake” —he said he wished really to go to Los Angeles from New York —has won everybody’s admiration for a daring, if somewhat foolhardy flight. Coming immediately after the immaculate success of Howard Hughes’s flight round the world, it provided something in the nature of an anti-climax. Hughes planned his flight for two years, and had every assistance that money could buy. Corrigan paid for his expenses out of his savings, and he had only just enough funds to make the flight. He even slept beside his aeroplane —a “terrible ship” it was called in America—to save hotel expenses. Corrigan bought his nine-year-old craft five years ago, paid £65 for it, and spent £ll5 on “improvements,” which included a bicycle wheel for the undercarriage. The flight cost him 2d a mile (Hughes's was estimated at £4 a mile), and he landed in Ireland without official permission, without passport or visa, and with about £2 in his pockets. The airman had no luggage, no, charts, no radio, no parachute, and few instruments. These were restricted to a “bank and turn” indicator, ah altimeter, a simple compass, and a speed indicator. His map was a page torn from a school atlas; a fourshilling watch was his chronometer. The cabin was so cluttered up with extra petrol tanks that he could not see straight ahead, and to do so he had to turn the aeroplane and look out of a side window. The door of his cabin was loose when he left New York, and would not close, so he fixed it with a niece of wire hooked round a nail and tied round his waist. For food Corrigan had only a few bars of chocolate, a gallon of water, and some fruit. His clothes were a leather' jacket over his shirt, and a pair of oil-stained brown check trousers. Officials, were bewildered when he landed at the Baldonnel airport, 10 miles from Dublin, and said, “Say is this Los Angeles?” For two hours he had to explain to them why he had no papers, and the American Minister in Dublin eventually helped him to straighten out matters.