The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1922-02-24

Speed Of 1907 Miles an Hour.
Mans first feeble nutter In his con-
quest Of the air lifted him aloft' for
the feeting period Of tiIty-niue sec
onds. Eighteen years later he scared
eagle-like through space for twenty.
six and one-third hours.
When Wilbur Wright, In q heavier
than-air machine, flew 852 feet at
Kitty Hawk on December II, 1903, the
feat was pronounced one Of the mar
wells of the century. The whole world
rang with the accomplishment.
Recently a monoplane, piloted by
Edward S%tinson, accompanied by
Lloyd Bertaud, a mechanic, finished q
continuous flight of 20 hours 10
minutes 50 seconds. In eighteen years
a span Of less than"a minute had been
stretched to more than ~a-eday. and~a
night. Yet he marvellous. perform.
ance at Mineola is heralded rs simply
the breaking Of a worlds endurance
flight In aviation.
Many Lives Sacrificed.
While the advance in the science of
flying has been both rapid and star
Ting, when the period involved is con
sidered, a careful analysis shows that
the progress came not by leaps and
bounds, but rather through hundreds
OF experiments, sacrificed lives and de-
termination seldom devoted 10 similar
projects.
Five years after Wright's initial
flight he still held the worlds record
with seventy-seven miles, made in 2
hours 20 minutes and % seconds at
Anvours, France. Two years before
that, A. Santos Dumont covered 100
feet In the first flight ever made In
Europe. In 1909 Henry Farman had
gained the flying honors for France
with a flight Of 1877 miles in a hours
8 minutes and % seconds.
Just a decade after Wright had
made his first hop off" national and
international flying races for famous
trophies were the voguex In <,both
Europe and America. Then game the.
war, and the sporting side Of aviation
gave way to the more Seri eeassseombat
of the air, with hundreds. 81. .ayiators
killing and being killed In a realm
foreign to mankind but q few yeal
before. b.
Before the transition, however, the
feats of the Wrights, Farnan, Santos
Dumont and the other pioneers of the
plane had ceased to be impressive.
Flying had passed to the competitive
plane, with records for speed, endur
ance, altitude and passenger carrying
being pushed upward annually. Sever
years after Wright's 59-second flight,
G.. Tourney held the endurance record
with eleven hours of continuous flying.
At the close of 1914 this record had
been almost doubled, for w. Land.
mann maintained q continuous fight
of Fl hours 4S minutes and 40 seconds,
In Germany, between June 20 and ~
of that year. The records also show
that L. Noel Of England flew for more
than 10 minutes with nine passengers,
and fifteen passengers had been car
ried to a height of nearly q thousand
feet by the Russian aviator Sykorsky.
Stinson added 2 hours and % sec
onds to the worlds best previous en-
durance record previously held by
Broussoutrut and Bernard as the re
suit Of a flight made In France a year
ago last June. A span of four and a
half hours was thus added by Stinson
to the record made by Landmann some
seven years ago.
Flying at q speed Of ninety-fve
miles an hour, they had battled with a
snowstorm while. Swimming over the
earth at a height Of less thanI00 feet,
with cold below zero, with a seventy
mile gale, and with hot singing oil
that splashed In their faces and al
most blinded them.
Fly $500 Miles.
While no official record was kept of
the distance flown by the Americans,
competent observers estimated that
their plane had covered approximately
$500 miles. In distance covered Stin.
son and Bertaud undoubtedly sur
passed all former records, and more
than equaled the transatlantic flight
Of 1860 miles made by late Capt. Sir
John Alcock and Lieut.. Arthur w.
Brown from st. Johns, Newfoundland,
to Clifden, Ireland.
The endurance flight came as a
fitting climax to the achievement of
American aviation in 1921, when four
worlds records were made by Yankee
aviators. The other three were:
An altitude and efficiency record for
flying boats made when a Looming
monoplane reached 1880 feet with
four passengers on August 10.
An altitude record made by Lieut..
J. A. McCreedy Of the army air SER
vice, who plloted an airplane TO the
height Of 81, 800 feet at Dayton, Ohio,
on September %, breaking the pre-
vious mark of 33,114 feet set by Maj.
Rudolph Schroeder.
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