Aeronautics: Flights of the Week, Aug. 31, 1931

• Share

(2 of 2)

Colonel and the Shimushiru's crew who were described as being animated by "the indomitable spirit of the flyer himself." At Muroton, the Colonel worked on his motor till late in the evening, spent the rest of the night on a government fox farm whose three guards are the only inhabitants of Shimushiru Island. In the morning the Lindberghs rose at 5 o'clock, finally got the motor going and took off, from the quiet cliff-enclosed harbor, for Nemuro.

Fog promptly forced them down again, first at Eturup Island, where they stayed at a village inn; next day at Lake Annoro, where they spent another night in the plane and where the inhabitants lit fires on the lake shore to frighten away bears. Next day the Lindberghs flew the last 50 miles to Nemuro. From the balcony of the Nibiki Ryokan, where their beds had awaited them for four nights, Col. Lindbergh addressed the cheering populace. "We are glad to be in Nemuro," said he.

Laggard, The DO-X, largest flying boat, last week resumed her laggard nine-month journey from Switzerland. Proceeding by easy stages from Belem, Brazil, where two motors had been replaced, she paused at San Juan to pick up a passenger. He was George Washington Grouse. Syracuse, N.Y. grocer, onetime passenger on the Graf Zeppelin. So eager was he to extend his accomplishments that he had waited two weeks for the arrival of the DO-X. After a stop at Cuba, the DO-X settled comfortably at Miami. Riding at anchor in Biscayne Bay, she was inspected by hordes of curious Miamians and by big brown pelicans which flapped overhead, stared down curiously at her twelve engines, set in tiers of six. After the stop at Miami, the DO-X planned to amble up the coast to New York.