Evening star., 1924-09-02
LIEUT.. ARNOLD HERO
Of LABRADOR HOP
PIucky Flyer Who Pumped Oil
With Arm Near Collapse
at Landing.
BY FREDERICK r.. NEELY.

StdH correspondent OF Ihe Star.
ON BOARD L. S. S. RICHMOND
ICE TICkLED, LABRADOR, Septem.
Der l (via wireless).-With the dread
menace of the Northland safely be-
hind them al last. Lieut.. Lowell Smith
and Lieut. Eric Nelson unraveled here
today the first personal story Of how
they overcame almost insurmountable
barrier on their historical flight
across the Arctic, Atlantic and finally
arrived without mishap on the conti-
nent of North America
1t is a story of men with iron
nerves and the will to conquer. who
dared the wrath of land Of perpet-
ual ice. And now they are back home,
within reach of their cherished goal.
Arnold is Hero.
Lieut.. Arnold, the game little me-
chanician who has Travelled with
Lieut.. Smith is the outstanding hero
OF the four. because only his willing
ness to make a machine of himself
when the flight commanders motor
began to fail. prevented both OF them
from being forced down and probably
counted out of the world flight when
almost within reach of North America
itself
Half of the distance between Green
land and Labrador had been COM
pleted when Lieut.. Smiths engine be-
gan to splutter and show alarming
signs Of rapidly failing. Hasty ex-
animation showed that the pump that
forces the fuel into the motor had
broken down and a forced landing
| was imminent But Lieut.. Arnold
took the place of the mechanical
pump and with his own right arm
worked the piston back and forth.
Limit OF Endurance.
For four long hours he sat there,
| mechanically operating the pump
with the power of his own muscles,
two strokes a minute. 1t was almost
too much for human endurance, but
Arnold modestly refused to accept
any plaudits for his work when the
plane was brought safely to its har-
bor. declaring that 1t was nothing
at all. because after the first hour
the pain in my arm and shoulder
passed away completely, due to the
fact that both parts became numb
and insensible to any feeling what
ever
Lieut.. Arnold was the first ashore,
wading to the beach through icy
water, knee deep. He smilingly joked
with his comrades about the battery
of camera men, who waited to
shoot" the flyers. But when he
reached the Richmond, physicians
saw that the officer could not even
raise his right arm. Arnold almost
collapsed under the reaction and it
took several hours of careful mas
saging by the ships doctors be-
fore he could even appear at the
dinner table.
Landed ON Birthday.
Incidentally. the day the flyers
landed on North America was Arnold's
birthday, and the first person to shout
welcome to the globe girdlers was
an American newspaper man, who
called out a happy birthday" to the
young aviator. Lieut.. Locatelli, the
Italian flyer who dropped into the
ocean when he attempted to accom-
pany the Americans from Iceland to
Greenland, was there, too.
Thank God we are back on the
soil of North America were the first
words Smith uttered when he stepped
upon the beach.
The passage from Greenland to
Labrador was flown at a maximum
height of 100 feet. So dense was the
fog in the higher attitudes when the
flyers started that they could not see
ahead FAR enough to avoid the poSsi-
bility of a collision with each other
and there were times when both
planes had to drop to within 25 feet
of the frothing. icy waters of the
ocean. where disaster would have re-
suited from the slightest accident.
1t was just such flying conditions
that forced down Lieut.. Locatelli en-
route to Greenland.
But the dangers of this last hop
were as nothing, when compared to
theNnarrow escapes Lieut.. Smith and
his comrades experienced on their
epochal journey from Reykjavik to
Fredericksdal. Then they were oblig-
ed to dash through virtual valleys Of
ice and past lofty icebergs. many
times being completely lost to each
other in those great white mazes
through which the Arctic winds
moaned
We lodged around icebergs like
Kids around city corners" Smith said
while we were flying above the
pack girdle Of Greenland Arnold and
suddenly turned a corner around
the big ice mass and lost Nelson.
There were many times that we flew
so low to the mountains of ice that
our pontoons almost scraped some Of
the pinnacles. For one full hour Of
that passage we crashed through the
densest fog I have ever experienced
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