AERONAUTICS: Races

Heavy rains last week did not improve such arrangements as the city fathers of Philadelphia had made for the biggest aeronautical event of the year, the National Air Races. The fathers had selected a tract of land called Model Farms, four feet below the level of the Delaware River on the southwest edge of town. Last week pilots and spectators concluded that it was a model farm for rice-growing only.

Nevertheless, the races went on (TIME, Sept. 13). New York National Guardsmen, led by chunky, grinning Lieut. Carl W. Rach of Miller Field, won the National Guard Trophy race. There being no amateur code about flying, Flyer Rach gladly accepted $500 prize money.

The Army beat the Navy in the Liberty Engine Builders' trophy race, Lieut. Orville L. Stephens coming home first in a Curtiss Falcon observation plane after averaging 142.6 m.p.h. for a dozen laps of a 12-mile course. Later the Navy, in the person of Lieut. C. T. Cuddihy, roared back, to win from the Army the Kansas City Rotary Club trophy, over a 120-mi. closed course in a Boeing FB-3, the new type of pursuit plane developed for use as a fighting ship flown from the plane-carriers Lexington and Saratoga (TIME, Aug. 9). The Liberty Bell Trophy race was an all-Army affair from first to last, for light bombing planes. Lieut. L. M. Wolfe of McCook Field (Dayton, Ohio) dashed home first by a wide margin, 120 mi. at 123.71 m.p.h.