Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-06-28
Half Way Round Globe Now
Post and Gdtty Must Lose Calendar Day Soon on
Crossing International Date Line-Sed Of Okhofsk
and Mountain Loom Ahedd-Speed Increases.
BY WILEY POST, HAROLD GATTY,

BY WILEY POST, HAROLD GATTY,
Pilot and NdV Rtn@ie S "a the No"o'''"'
world Copyright 1881. by the New York
Times Co. P PuSif RnISiad in Whole or in
BY Gable to The Star.
IRKUTSK, Siberia, June Give are
now half way around the world in 3
DAYS and 90 hours.
Our physical condition is perfect and
We are continuing Immediately for
Blagovestchensk.
Must Lose Calendar Day.
Wiley Pest and Harold Gatty. who
have travelled eastward so fast that in
less than four days of flying they have
gained more than half a day on The
calender. soon will reach a point where
time will catch up with them.
All the hours they have gained on
the sun in their attempted To-day hop
around the world will be lost on the
fight from Khabsrovsk to Nome when
they must cross the international date
line, where the future becomes the
past.
Elapsed Time to Count.
This imaginary but we'll defined line,
running from north to south. curves
around the Aleutian Islands at their
western end and divides the Bering Sea
diagonally. Somewhere over this sub
Arctic Sea the flyers will cross the line
on their hop from Sibel ia to Alaska.
If Gatty and Post CHANGED to cross
the date line at Sunday midnight. they
would still find all day Sunday before
them. These freakish results of mans
efforts to reconcile time with the move
ment of the sun. however. will have no
effect upon the flyers attempt to circle
the world in 10 days or better.
All the time that they gained on their
eastward flight will be lost at the date
line and the success or failure of the
venture Will be determined anyway by
the elapsed time between their take-off
and arrival at New York.
lis Miles Per Hour in Ideal Air.
Pushing on rentlessly to take ad-
vantage OF what they described as ideal
flying conditions, Wiley Post, pilot, and
Harold Gatty, his navigator and radio
man, lifted yesterday the already high
average of their speed in the air as
they sent the white monoplane, Winnie
Mae, hurtling over eastward across the
Siberian forests. When they set the
plane down at Blagovestchensk they
had more than PACED the halfway
mark of their 15,000-mile flight against
the record around the world and had
put 8,415 miles behind them.
BY flying this distance in So hours
6 minutes they had raised their
flying time from 141.5 miles an hour
to 144.5. At Irkutsk they were %
hours ahead of their Today schedule
The leg to Irkutsk was made at 1853
miles and that to Blagovestchensk at
he etortlinO cnoad IF 17E F11iloR IN
hour.
Better Than COste or Graf Yep.
This time may be compared with an
air speed of almost exactly 100 miles
an hour for the distance record flight
of Capt. Dieudonne CoSte and Maurice
Bellonte. when they few from Paris
to Manchuria in 81 hours 80 minutes
over a distance which was actually
somewhat more than $500 miles, al
though the official figure, based on air
line measurements, is set at 1850.
1t compares also with the much
slower speed of the dirig be Graf
which. on the unbroken trip
course of the woodworking flight which
the two airmen are now striving to
better. averaged 66 miles an hour for
a flight of $500 miles.
Flyers Cross Lake BaikaI.
The Oklahoma pilot and his naviga-
tor, who lives in Los Angeles, but halls
from Australia, had strange country
under their wings in the course of yes
terday's fight. At Irkutsk, standing
at the influx of the Irkut River into
the Angora, about 80 miles from the
shore of Lake Baikal,
they saw one of the larger Siberian
cities with a strong accent of the Orient.
For all its stone houses, its noted
Society and its magnetic
observatory, it is a
market city for the wares Of the East
and through it tea, rhubarb, fruits and
Chinese products go to customers in
Western Russia.
Crossing Lake Baikal, famed in travel
stories of Siberia, they passed over
Chita, lying at the junction of the
Chita and Irodda Rivers, and saw be-
meath them the seemingly never-ending
woods that merge into the gold mining
region which surrounds Blagovest-
chensk, whose polysyllabic Russian
name means "annuncistion."
Ahead of them lay Khabarovsk, at
the junction of the Amur and the Us
surf Rivers, where the Ussuri branch
of the Trans-Siberian Railway leaves