Evening star., 1938-09-05
EIGHT FLYERS VIE
FOR $4,000 TODAY
Pot for 300- Mile Air Race at
Cleveland Will Be Split 8
Ways, If All Finish.
3y the Associated Press.

2y the Associated Press.
CLEVELAND, Sept. Sin the brief
space of rs minutes, eight men will
divide pot Of s45.000 this afternoon
the worlds richest purse in one of the
worlds most dangerous sports-air
racing.
Eight men will split it if eight men
finish a pounding, Furnishing flight
over a closed. 10-mile course at speeds
appros ching 300 miles an hour. Some
times they don't.
Russell Chambers of Los Angeles, has
died in six days of qualifying and
competitive flights at the National Air
Races, aviation's annual big show.
Another is critically injured A
third, at the point of jumping from
his tiny, stub-winged mount as fire
ate into his cockpit and streamed back
under the belly of his fuselage, man
aged somehow to land
The final race of the three day meet,
todays Thompson classic, is over a
route Of 800 miles, cut into segments
of az miles. the distance between the
pylons marking the quadrangular
course
Terrific Speeds Seen.
Based on the runs against stop
watch which qualified the planes en-
tered in the event, the grind resolves
itself into a fight between two old
hands at the business of coaxing speed
out of planes which, with throttles
open, become mere blurs on photo
graphic plates.
Roscoe Turner of Chicago, a for
mer winner of the event, will be pitted
against Earl Ortman of Los Angeles,
who has been among the big money
flnishers in previous years. Turner
has an argument to settle with Ort-
man. The Los Angeles flyer shut him
out of first money in the prize race
at an Oakland, Calf, meet last May.
Twice Turner has lost the Thomp-
son race by cutting" a pylon. That
is, making a turn too short and in
side course marker.
Indicative of the speeds which may
be expected possibly echpsing the
Thompson record set at Los Angeles
in 1885 by a Frenchman. Michel De-
troyat-was Turner's qualifying pace
of 28l.25 miles an hour and Ortman's
270,473. Detroyat's average pace two
years ago was 264 426
The other six pilots are Joe jacob
son. Kansas City; Arthur C. Chester,
Los Angeles; Leigh Wade of New
York City and Buenos Ai~es; Joseph
Mackey, Findlay, Oh }; S. j. Witt
man, Oshkosh, Wis, ana Harry Crosby,
Los Angeles
lie Vier Is Out.
Absent from todays starting line
when the flag goes down for a race
horse" take-off will be Tony lie Vier.
Los Angeles, who yesterday snatched
victory from Chester in the $4,000
Greve trophy race and collected S10.-
900 in first money in addition to
$4,000 for setting a new average speed
for the race
His mark of $50 1856 miles per hour
hettered Detroyat's record for the
Greve by more than three miles. A
bumpy landing which fractured a
The Greve race proved disastrous
for George Dory, a Los Angeles fly
ing instructor who was competing
in his first big money event. A lit
tie more than midway of the 200
mile flight, Dory's motor went bad
He slithered groundward five miles
northwest of Cleveland Airport.
Chambers Succumbs,
When rescuers pulled him from the
wreckage of his tiny, silver-colored
ship and carried him to a hospital,
he was given fair" chance to live.
A broken tree testified to the force
with which he had struck, inflicting
possible fractures of the head and
back
Crosby, fighting an exhaust fire
which started when he lost a motor
stack, opened his cockpit cover to
jump, changed his mind, and streaked
in to landing with a dead propeller
Death overlook Chambers last night
after four days of seeming con-
valeScence from crash during
qualifying flight last Wednesday.
OF the eight previous winners of
the Thompson classic, four-Charles
w, Holman, Lowell Bayles, James
Wedell and Rudy Kling-are dead
All we're killed in plane crashes.