THE FIRST WORLD FLIGHT

Recounted by Pilot Lowell H. Smith to Flight Historian Lowell Thomas.

THE round-the-world flight of the United States Army Air Service during 1924 was one of the greatest achievements in the history of aviation. Of the four airplanes which started from Seattle, Washington, April 6, two, the "Chicago" and "New Orleans," manned respectively by Lieutenants Lowell H. Smith and Leslie P. Arnold, and by Lieutenants Erik Nelson and John Harding, returned to Seattle on September 28, having flown 26,345 miles in 365 hours 11 minutes flying time.

Here is an account of two of the most hazardous stages of the flight, the "hop" from Alaska to Asia and from Iceland to Greenland. It is taken from Lowell Thomas's "The First World Flight," by permission of Houghton, Mifflin and Company. The flagplane "Seattle," piloted by Major Frederick Martin, crashed into a mountain in Alaska, and the "Boston" was forced down and wrecked off the Faroe Islands, the crew resuming the flight at Pictou, N. S.

AT 11:3 5 on the morning of May 15, 1924, we set forth across the Pacific, and at five minutes past midday we passed over the last bit of American soil that we were to see for a long time. Bering Sea is one of the roughest bodies of water in the world, as we had long since discovered, and right here where it joins the North Pacific is the roughest part. The sky in the southwest in the direction of Paramushiru had suddenly turned black, while due west it was still clear. So we headed toward the Komandorskis, deciding to take our chances with the Bolsheviks rather than face the wrath of the storm. For three hours we flew out of sight of land, wondering all the time what the Russians would think when they saw three giant planes swoop down out of the sky in this remote region where even ships only come about once a year.

After we had changed our course to avoid the storm and headed for the Komandorskis, our nearest land was Copper Island, two hundred and seventy miles away. This island is nine miles long and one mile wide not a very large object, and one that could be easily missed in an ocean, had our navigation been at fault. This was our first long water flight and consequently our first real test, so that, after straining our eyes for hours in an effort to sight Copper Island, it was rather a triumph to see it eventually "dead ahead," over our radiator caps.

At 3:05 we arrived over Copper Island, heading northwest toward Bering Island, the largest of the group, and at five o'clock saw a dent in the coast and the wireless towers of the Soviet looming above the village of Nikolski. About the same moment I spotted the "Eider" [an American supply ship] five miles offshore. But it was too rough for us to come down away out there, and her officers, realizing this, steamed to three miles from Nikolski and dropped buoys while we circled above the island.

Although it was early Wednesday morning of May 15, when we left Attu, and we were only five hours in the air, it was Thursday afternoon, May 16, when we landed at the Komandorskis, for we had crossed the one hundred and eightieth meridian, where time changes, and had dropped a day of our lives.

As we taxied toward the buoys, a boat put out from shore, so after mooring we climbed back in our cockpits ready to take off again if necessary. The boat came alongside, with five men on board, two in uniform and three in civilian clothes. All had long beards, and looked just as Russians marooned away out here ought to look. None could speak English and of course we knew as little about their language as we knew about Chinese. . . . Fortunately, there was a sailor on the "Elder" who was a Lithuanian from Chicago and proved a capable interpreter. We explained that we had been forced to put in at their islands because of storms to the south. When we assured them that we were birds of passage winging our way round the world, and that we merely desired to remain overnight, they said they would send a wireless message to Moscow to see what Comrade Trotsky had to say. . . . At daylight just as we were getting ready to take off, out came the bearded committee in their little boat with word from Moscow that we could not be allowed to stop there. We thanked them for their courtesy, and chuckled to ourselves a bit because we had already remained as long as we wanted. . . . And at 9:30 a.m. on the 17th of May we were over a headland jutting out into the ocean beneath us and knew that we were at last above the continent of Asia and had completed the first aerial crossing of the Pacific.

Strung out between Iceland and Greenland, about one hundred and twenty-five miles apart, were five American ships, the cruiser "Richmond," with Rear-Admiral Magruder on board, the cruiser "Raleigh," and the destroyers "Barry," "Reid," and "Billingsby." Captain Lyman A. Cotton, in command of the Admiral's flagship "Richmond,"described this stretch from Iceland to Greenland as the longest and most difficult leg of the trans-Atlantic flight. Says Lieutenant Smith :

We realized when we passed over the "Billingsby" that it would be good-bye to her. So we flew low in order to wave to our old friends, and we were cheered to find that the sailors had painted "Good Luck" in huge white letters on the deck. Perhaps the telling of this sounds prosaic, but to us, out there in the middle of the North Atlantic on the most dangerous leg of our World Flight, such encouragement from our Navy friends made an impression that looms large in our memories even now. Next we passed the "Barry," displaying two flags from her yard. This was a signal to notify us that there was dangerous weather ahead. But it was too late to turn back now. Nor was there any place to park out there in the Atlantic midway between Iceland and Greenland. There was nothing we could do but carry-on and trust in Providence and our Liberty motors. . . . Seventy-five miles out from Greenland we struck the first floes. As we neared the coast, the ice increased until we were flying over a seemingly endless expanse of fantastic bergs of every size and shape. Some looked as high as the Chicago Tribune Tower or the Woolworth Building. Had we seen them under different conditions the sight, no doubt, would have inspired us. As it was, they were terrifying, because we never saw them until we were right upon them. We had to fly as low as thirty feet off the water in order to keep our bearings at all, so you can just imagine the close shaves we had while playing tag and leap-frog with those icebergs!

We were traveling along at a speed of ninety miles an hour, and could see only between a hundred and a hundred and fifty feet ahead, so use your own imagination as to how soon a plane traveling at that speed could use up the distance that we could see, and then try and figure out how little time was left us to sight a berg ahead, decide which way to turn, and then execute the maneuver. Three times we came so suddenly upon huge icebergs that there was no time left to do any deciding. We simply jerked the wheel back for a quick climb, and were lucky enough to zoom over the top of it into the still denser fog above. Here we were completely lost and unable to see beyond the prop and wing-tips. Blindly we would grope and feel our way downward, hoping against hope that the little space we should eventually descend into just above the surface of the water would be clear of ice for a great enough distance to enable us to glance around, size up the situation, and get set for dodging the next one.