Evening star., 1940-09-08
Il Short Story Complete in This Issue

Il Short Story Complete in This Issue
UIM VANCAMP did not like General Carval
1t might be said in the same breath that
~ thegeneral did not like Jim Vancamp. but
the generals dislike was less specific. General
Carval did not approve of any North Amer
leans, or rather, Of any North American
women Look at the women and girls who
came unescorted to Montevideo and Buenos
Aires and Rio de Janero on the cruise ships
Look at them, - and the general. looking,
would grope vainly for word to describe a
woman young or old, married or single -
who would appear at the cinema, in the
cafes, or on the streets after nightfall and
unescorted.
One might call General Don Carlos Miguel
Carval de Ojeda intolerant; one might point
out that his attitude did not represent that of
his country; but the fact remained that he
was commander of the air forces of the Re-
public and that his refusal to approve or even
consider the purchase of American-bu air
planes was very final decision.
Jim Vancamp had come to South America
to survey routes for continent wide network
of ir-freight lines, but he was also salesman
and he brought samples of his wares. He
brought BT4 transport which could carry
bombs as easily as it could passengers, and an
RF8 pursuit job with a performance-rati
superior to that of the Messerschmidt fighter.
Both planes had been developed by
Great Basin Air Transport. and the group
which accompanied Vancamp to South
America was hand picked from the best of
the G-BAT personnel He had Tacks Malone
as chief pilot. the radio wizard Lance Rker
as communications expert, and Polly Ann
Meredith to assist Malone with the plotting
and for the benefit of the publicity which she
would attract as the foremost aviatrix of
America, if not the world He had secretary
and an interpreter and he had his wife as
a rather unnecessary chaperon for the two
girls.
Tacks Malone demonstrated the RF8 to air
force officers from Mexico to the Argentine,
but the G-BAT party travelled in the trans
port, and the pursuit ship was dismantled and
shipped by boat over the long distances be
tween the South American capitals.
! ROM Caracas in Venezuela to Rio de
Janeiro is approximately the distance from
New York to Los Angeles in direct airline.
and all of it is over the jungles of the Orinoco
and the Rio Negro and the Amazon. With the
exception of Manaos there is scarcely town
on the route as large as the average American
county seat. There are no railroads until one
approaches Rio, no highways save the count
less rivers of the Amazon drainage. no landing
fields, and no regular facilities for fuel or oil
or repairs.
One does not send pursuit ship, with a
cruising radius of five hundred miles, on such
an excursion, 50 the RF8 made all such hops in
the hold of coastal freighter - 45OO miles
around the huge eastern bulge of South
America - and the transport, too, followed
the curving coastline where the waters of the
blue Atlantic meet the outflow of thousand
jungle rivers.
Papers from Colombia to the Argentine
played up that flight to an extent far greater
than it merited The G-BAT party was fol-
lowing an airlane posted Throughout its
entire length by the radio stations and ports
of Pan-American Airways, but the PAA
cruisers are not manned by slender gray-eyed