An Aerial Adventurer
UT I have had no adventures of any consequence," -11-, Mr. Van Lear Black told me, "nor a single forced landing or other mishap during nearly 60,000 Miles of air travel since I began to fly this time last year."
Mr. Black is a retired American newspaper owner and business man with considerable interests not only in the United States but also in Europe and Asia. I met him about this time last year when he had just decided to take a long holiday and amuse himself with flying.
Imperial Airways have missed a goad custoMer in him, but the Dutch were first in the field and secured the contract to supply a Jupiter-Fokker monoplane, which is always at his call. He has two pilots, Mynheeren geisendorffer and Scholte, also Et. mechanic, and a valet, Bayline, who accompanies him on his long-clista,nee excursions. Although the trips he has made are chiefly for pleasure (he often decides to lunch in the Bois de Boulogne and returns from Paris in the afternoon) he also has business interests in the Dutch East Indies and other places which he has visited recently. He went to Batavia last June, for instance, spent a week in Java looking after some rubber business, and returned to London towards_ the end of July. During 1927 he flew 45,962 miles, which is almost twice round the earth, This year he has so far done a paltry 10,000 miles, his longest trip being the ten days he has just spent in Spain.
• On the return from Madrid he decided to fly to London in the day. In spite of the altitude of the Madrid Aero- drome (2,000 feet) and the fact that there was a climb of another 6,000 feet immediately afterwards with a full load on board, the machine behaved splendidly, and reached Paris at 2 p.m. After a halt of twenty minutes for refuelling it went on to -Londont arriving at 4.20 p.m., the fastest air journey-ever made from Madrid 914 miles in, ten hours.
Mr. Black's trip to Java, undertaken at a moment's notice, and with little more trouble than is entailed in hailing a taxi, is an extraordinary story, If we were not so accustomed-to the improbable, this middle-aged publisher who flew across the historic cities of Europe, the gold domes of Kazimain-, the Garden of Eden, Ur of the Chaldees, the great plains of India, and the tropical forests of Malaya, and then after a week of work and play retraced his steps and returned to London five weeks later as if nothing had happened, is an adventure which should not pass unnoticed.
Only once in his 60,000 miles of air travel has Mr. Black even considered the possibility of a " 'crash:" And on that occasion nothing untoward happened. Between Adrianople and Constantinople he was dozing in his easy chair when Leo Bayline woke him With the news that the engine had gone wrong. "Well, that was the pilots'. job, and they have never failed me yet," Mr. Black said, hi telling me the story. "I looked out of the window and there was nothing but trees and mountains. We came lower and lower towards them with the engine popping. I lit a cigarette, and just at that moment 'Jupiter began to pick up. Presently we sighted the Sea of Marmora and the minarets of Constantinople, so we were all right. That was on the way to Batavia last year. At Bagdad we had some trouble with lubrication and dust- storms which delayed us a day. We reached Karachi with a strong breeze behind us and shot across India with no more than an aerial glance at the Taj Mahal, landing in Allahabad after a flight of more than 1,000 miles. Not bad for a day's journey, that, although we have done better. Then down the Ganges to Calcutta. At Sengora in Siam the flying field is small, and in getting off it we grazed the bushes at the far side, but the wonderful capacities of the Fokker were our salvation : when we landed at Singapore we still had large pieces of shrubs hanging on to our under-carriage, but no damage waS done.
"On June 30th we reached Batavia and landed there at 7.5 p.m. After a very delightful week, enjoying the great hospitality we were 'Offered both at Batavia and Bandoong, we started for Our return journey on July 6th. We dined with Prince Svasti of Siam at Bangkok on the way back ; next day we met -some bad weather over the dangerous Sundarbans, infested, by tigers and crocodiles. From Allahabad to Karachi took us only eight hours. Then we fought a sandstorm in the Sind Desert. We landed at Basra to get a supply of drinking water and fill up with- oil, and while we were doing so we heard a hiss from the under-carriage and found we had a flat tyre. It was a good thing it punctured, however; for presently a dust storm blew up with a velocity of seventy- five miles an hour. All day long it raged. We tried to get off next day, and roared up into the gale, but in twenty minutes' time we had only made five miles, so we turned, and in a flash we were back in Basra, where we had to wait for 'four days for the weather to clear. Afterwards, we followed the winding Tigris to Kut and the Arch of Ctesiphon and the date gardens of Bagdad, then across the desert to Aleppo, and thence through a gap in the TauruS to Konia, Scutari, and the Golden Horn. The last day but one of our trip We covered the 1,875 miles between Constantinople and Nureniberg in a day. From there it was a comparatively short jump to Schipol and London. The whole journey to Java and back was 18,819 miles, We did it very -comfortably in • thirty-nine days, which included various stops en route and a week in Java. Our actual flying time was 188i hours.". That in a few words is the story as Mr. Van Leaf Black told it me. But what he has done pales into insignificance before what he intends to do.
This next week he starts on a journey to Cape Town. He will- spend a few weeks in South Africa, where he has business, -and then return to Cairo. After a brief halt for overhauling the three-engined "Jupiter- Fokker," he intends to fly to China to have a look at the Situation there. • • Comment on these activities is superfluous. The record, of course, bears witness to the skill of the pilots and to the enterprise of the- charterer, whose example should be followed by more people who have earned the right to amuse themselves by a lifetime of hard work. Finally, this little story shows how safe the Royal Dutch Air Lines are. Indeed, their record is almost as good as that of our own Imperial Airways, who between January 1st, 1925, and March 28th, 1928, have flown 2,639,870 miles and carried 56,642 passengers without any injury Let us remember these facts and figures and take them to heart ; -in face of them can anyone say flying is not safe and simple ?
F. YEATS-BROWN.
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