Archive Record
Images
Metadata
Catalog Number |
2019.001.071 |
Object Name |
Clipping, Newspaper |
Title |
Fliers Boost Speed Marks to Dizzying Peak |
Collection |
Wiley Post Collection |
Creator |
Daily Oklahoman |
Scope & Content |
Daily Oklahoman article describing Wiley Post and Harold Gatty's flight over Siberia and the speed records they broke along the way. |
Date |
06/27/1931 |
Transcription |
[Top] (Reprinted from final editions of Sunday.) Fliers Boost Speed Marks To Dizzy Peak ——— Post and Gatty Now Over Wildest Section Of The Globe. ——— (Copyright 1931, by the New York Times and the daily Oklahoman) NEW YORK, June 27.—Pushing on relentlessly to take advantage of what they described as ideal flying conditions, Wiley Post, pilot, and Harold Gatty, his navigator and radio man, Lifted Saturday the already high average of their speed in the air as they sent the white monoplane, Winnie Mae, hurtling eastward across Siberian forests. When they set the plane down at Blagovestchensk they had more than passed the half-way mark of their 15,000-mile flight against the record around the world and had put 8,415 miles behind them. By flying this distance in 58 hours, 6 minutes they had raised their average flying time from 141.5 miles an hour to 144.5. At Irkutsk they were 28 hours ahead of their ten-day schedule. The leg to Irkutsk was made at 145.8 miles and that to Glagovestchensk at the startling speed of 175.9 miles an hour. Far Surpass Coste’s Speed This time compared with an air speed of almost exactly 100 miles an hour for the distance record flight of Capt. Dieudonne Coste and Maurice Bellonte when they flew from Paris to Manchuria in 51 hours, 39 minute[s] over a distance which was actually somewhat more than 5,100 miles, although the official figure, based on air line measurements, is set at 4,950. It compares also with the much slower speed of the dirigible Graf Zeppelin which, on the unbroken trip From Friedrichshafen to Tokio in the course of the world-circling flight which the two airmen are now striving to better—averaged 66 miles an hour for a flight of 6,800 miles. An Oriental City The Oklahoma pilot and his navigator, who lives in Los Angeles but hails from Australia, had strange country under their wings in the course of Saturday’s flight. At Irkusk, standing at the influx of the Irkut river into the Angara, about 30 miles from the northwestern shore of Lake Baikal, they saw one of the larger Siberian cities with a strong accent of the orient. For all its stone houses, its noted geographical society and its magnetic-meteorological observatory, it is a market city for the wares of the east and through it, tea, rhubarb, fruits, and Chinese products go to customers in Western Russia. On to Khabarvsk Crossing Lake Baikal, famed in travel stories of Siberia, they passed over Chita, lying at the junction of the Chita and Irodda rivers and saw beneath them the seemingly never- ending woods that merge into the gold mining region which surrounds Blagovestchensk, whose pollisyllabic Russian name means "annunciation." Ahead of them lay Khabarovsk at the junction of the Amur and the Ussuri rivers, where the Ussuri branch of the Trans-Siberian railway leaves the main stem. It is not a large settlement but one of hardy folk, for its mean temperature in July is 70 degrees and in January 7 degrees below zero. Ahead, too, lay the sea of Okhotsk, which they must cross on the way to Bering strait and Nome, Alaska. It is a deep sea and cold—2,100 feet deep at its center. In it lies the famed island of Sakhalin, forest clad, with its woods broken by pasture lands. A Convict Haven Here, in the old days, convicts were concentrated and formed a large percentage of the human population. The animal population is rich to the fur-bearers and pelts by the thousand have gone forth from the island. Post and Gatty will cross or skirt Bakhalin by which ever route they elect to continue the arc of their circle. If they cross over it they must fly high, for it is mountainous and reaches an elevation of 5,000 feet at the Tiara peak. The distance from Khabarovsk is some 1,440 miles. To reach the first American possession 800 more miles must be flown, but then Nome is near at hand, for St. Lawrence island is but 130 miles from the Alaskan city. |
People |
Dieudonne Coste Harold Gatty Maurice Bellonte Wiley Post |
Search Terms |
Alaska Article Aviation China Flight Lockheed Company Record Russia Siberia Trans-Siberian railway World Zeppelin |