The Daily Alaska empire., 1936-01-16

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 Aging Winnie Mae Doubles Her Speed
By BILLY PARKER

While preparations were being made for the stratosphere flight Wiley Post and Frank Phillips, his financial packer, decided the world best could be awakened to the DOS abilities of stratosphere flying if the ship were flown from Los Angeles t. New York in the substratosphere at m extremely high rate of speed.
 From then on, all plans were laid around this idea, which in itself turned out to be mistake, for il automatically branded as a failure any flight which ended short of this goal.
 In all of his flights Wiley proved without doubt to thinking persons that the stratosphere is the place for all future long distance flying.
 Let us look at the record. When Wiley flew from Los Angeles on the morning of last March 15 he landed at Cleveland, C., seven hours and l9 minutes laser. This is distance of 2045 miles, which shows an aver age speed of 285 miles an hour.
 Doubled Speed
 But when he decided it was ne- cessary to land at Cleveland, Post already was 100 miles east of there, at about 10000 feet altitude.
 From that time it was an hour and Is minutes before he actually landed on the field, which would fix his average speed from the start to point over his final destination at around $40 miles an hour
 This was accomplished with an airplane eight years old in design, with a normal cruising speed at sea level of l50 miles an hour, a speed probably stepped up to ITO miles all hour by dropping the landing gear. Simply by going up to 10000 feet Wiley proved definitely the speed of a plane can be more than doubled.
 Let us see just what this means. It enables the craft to fly above all ordinary storms and cloud banks. reducing the weather problem. At the worst it would be necessary only to climb through bad weather at the start of a flight and descend through it near the destination. Ninety-five per cent of the flying could be done in clear weather.
 Since the perfection of blind, or instrument flying, weather no long : CT holds transport aircraft on the ground. Ice is the only serious diff culty now preventing 100 percent schedules
 Since ice forms on an airplane only at temperatures of 90 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit, except under extraordi-, nary conditions which do not cause serious trouble, there is no danger of ice at stratosphere levels. Ships would remain in cloud banks in lower levels such short time ice could cause no serious trouble.
 In addition, de-icers have been perfected so aircraft could, with safety, pull through ice-forming con- ditions until a non-icing area was reached.
 Ship Thoroughly Groomed
 Probably the most important fac tor for the future of air transporta- tion is the fact that to fly a given distance an airplane and its engine would be operated only half as long.
 This will cut costs nearly in half, with the resultant saving to the user of the service.
 In case of over-water flying the hazard will be greatly reduced in that the time spent away from land will be cut in half.
 Wiley encountered regrettable and unnecessary diff faculties through these significant months.
 When he was poised for his first attempt to fly from Burbank, Cal to New York last February p, we all thought his equipment was in per feet condition.
 For months the country's finest en- gineers and mechanics had groomec the ship, going over every bolt, nui and cotter key.
 Difficulties encountered prior tt that time had been of minor na- ture. They were to be expected il, any such research work, but they had been overcome. Test flights hat proved to the satisfaction of every one that the Winnie Mae was ready and, under ordinary circumstances would carry her master to New YorF in eight hours or less.
 But the next difficulty was moi surrounded by ordinary circumstapc es Less than an hour after his take off. after dropping his landing geal and climbing rapidly to 40,000 feet Wiley was down on Muroc Lake lucky to be alive.
 It was hard to believe anyone would stoop so low as to put emery in the ships engine Why it was done remains a profound mystery Il forced Wiley to an emergency land-