Indianapolis Times, Volume 41, Number 125, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 October 1929 — Page 13

CCT. 4, 1929

EGKENER TRAINS STORMS TO DO HIS WILL IN AIR Makes Gales Work for Him as Graf Zeppelin Goes Around World. This Is the fourteenth and last chapter of the life story of Dr. Huso Eckrner, navigator of the Graf Zeppelin. | It to now interesting to turn from Eckener, the business man arranging for the financing of farfiung Zeppelin lines, and Dr. Eckener, the scholar-pilot of the first dirigible to circumnavigate the globe, to Hugo Eckener, the boy of some forty or forty-five years ago. For referring back to the boy. we! better may understand the genius! of the man—the air pilot who learned to ride the storms. On the Bay of Flensburg young Hugo Eckener leartied to sail. He observed the winds and clouds. As he sailed more and grew older, these winds and clouds began to tell him things. He became the weather authority of the sailing community, j And now we come to Dr. Eckener, ! the pilot, first on the XR-3, crossing the Atlantic in 1924, and again on i the Graf, crossing the Pacific on the world cruise. When Dr. Eckener was preparing j to leave Friedrichshafen with the ZR-3 he was asked what route he intended to take. Picks Best Course "T will decide that when we get ready to start,” he replied. ‘‘No two j crossings will follow the same i course. We will select the one that promises the best weather. “We may swing as far north as Newfoundland. We may sail as far 6outh as the Azores. Or we may start on one route and change to the other before we get there.” His words were prophetic. Half way out, twelve hours’ sail beyond j the Azores, he found from ship and j land reports radioed to him. that a ; • great storm was swinging up from 1 the Gulf of Mexico. Storms are not arbitrary things •rising from nowhere, bound nowhere. They follow certain natural causes. The storm areas, some- j times 500 miles across, move around} the world, from west to east, lag- ; ging behind the world’s rotation, j and in the northern hemisphere, in I a counter clock-wise direction. Storm Due Ahead This storm, reported to the ZR-3 as moving northeasterly across the i Atlantic, was due ahead. If the ship continued on its course, it would presently encounter the south aide of it head on. Dr. Eckener studied his charts, then made his decision. “Change the course 90 degrees,” he said. “We’ll head for Newfoundland.” To New York from central Europe ; by way of the Azores and New- j foundland would strike the layman ! as curious navigation. But Eckener j learned the winds as a boy. And when this one struck the new Amer- j ■lean ship, he met it on the north, not on the south side of it. Bides the Gale Since the great circle of the storm was turning in the onposite direction to the hands of the clock, the top of the storm was moving with him, not against him. Checking his motors and giving i them a chance to rest, he drove { down the Newfoundland and New ! England coast at 100 miles an hour. He had ridden the storm—put it to work for him. Also on the first return trip of the Graf Zeppelin from Lakehurst to Germany in 1928, Dr. Eckener utilized the storms, although fog took him somewhat off his course. He headed back over the north Atlantic, taking the Lindbergh route or the great circle course, j Twenty-four passengers and one. stowaway were aboard. Swinging up the New England course toward Newfoundland, Dr. Eckener was in good spirits. Cape Race, outermost port of Newfoundland, reported clear weather with • brisk west wind. Ship In Storm In the afternoon the sky became overcast, white caps appeared, fog set in, the ship hit a series of j bumps. It entered into fog ten degrees warmer. Eckener flew blind through the fog until evening. j Their proposed route was to pass ; Cape Race at 100 miles offshore. I It was no small surprise to the navigating officers then when Commander M. R. Pierce, American observer, picked up the lights of Trepassey Bay. Now the speed of an airship Its always plus or minus the speed of the wind. In this case, the wind had been blowing a terrific gale without any of the passengers dreaming of it, so smoothly had the ship moved along. To the sixty mile an hour speed of the motors had been added perhaps another sixty by the vicious southwest gale. Instead of missing Newfoundland by 100 miles, as they planned, they were over it a few minutes after Pierce discovered the shore lights, due to the amazing j speed of the ship as it rode the j storm. And now the passengers knew they were in a gale. At times the wind was so strong that the ship was motionless. It swung forward fighting its way. Catches Typhon’s Tail The Grass motors were very powerful. Storms in time play themselves out. In a few hours they had i cleared the Newfoundland coas; and i ‘by noon the next day the sun had ' come out and they found them- j selves in midocean. Again, on the world flight, one of I the first reports received from Ja- j pan as Siberia was crossed, told ot a typhoon ahead. It held no terror for Eckener. It was merely his old “low” magnified by the meteorology of the Orient like the storm areas of the midAtlantic, a typhon swings in concentric circles. Dr. Eckener and the Graf took , out after the typhoon. They caught the tail of it and swung down the

coast at 100 miles an hour, landing at Tokio before they were expected. There the Graf found harbor in a hangar, which by the irony of fate had been built by Dr. Eckener in Germany and awarded to the Japanese to be re-erected on the other side of the world. The accident which dented a power car at Tokio, causing a day’s delay in the start across the Pa- | eifle to Los Angeles, gave Dr. Eckener the opportunity to seize the tail of another typhoon which was passing up the Japanese coast, and hurried the steps of the speeding Graf. For forty hours the former amateur sailor drove his airship by blind reckoninr. only on three occasions getting sight of the stars to check his calculations. Filially, not a great distance from the California coast, a Japanese steamer was sighted. He halted it by wireless, asked his position, checked it with the navigators. “Not bad,” he smiled. “We are but thirty miles off.” (The End)

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RESCUE PLANES REPORT FUTILE 300-MILE TRIP Pilots Brown and Spence Are Safe and Prepare for New Flight. flu Vnitid Prexti WINNIPEG, Man., Oct. 4.—A dash to Bathurst, “farthest north,” in the search for Colonel C. D. H. McAlj pine and his five aerial explorer, will be made today by Pilots Roy Brown and Bill Spence if the weather con- | tinues clear, according to radio reports received here. A massage, sent from Baker’s lake

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

and relayed via Churchill and The Pas, Man., reported the party, which included Captain G. S. Blanchette and two observers, had made a safe journey of 300 miles to Beverley Lake and return without finding a trace of McAlpine’s two airplanes. Blanchette is convinced the explorers are down somewhere between Beverley Lake and Bathurst. The relief expedition had not been heard from for fifty-two hours. Dominion explorers, in charge of the search, was planning to send a score of airplanes to search for them. The message, dated Oct. 3, read as follows: “Returned last night. Plan leaving today and waiting at Beverley Lake for a break or till forced back here by weather. Conditions good today for flight and may give us a chance to reach Pelly Lake and possibly continue north.” The ancent Romans wore shoes differing in shape, color and material according to rank.

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MACP?NALD TO BE HOUSED IN RUSTIC CABIN Mountain Camp to Be Scene of Naval Reduction Meeting. BY LAWRENCE SULLIVAN t’nited Press Staff Correspondent WASHINGTON, Oct. 4.—A rustic cabin of rough lumber, high in the pine -covered peaks of the famous Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, was ready today for Premier Ramsay MacDonald of England. Unless bad weather interferes with White House plans, President Hoover will take his celebrated 1

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guest to the presidential retreat at ] the headquarters of the Rapidan' river late Saturday afternoon to re- ! main Sunday night or Monday. Fine 1 weather is promised. In an isolated camp. WTenched from the mountain widerness dur- | inr, the last six months, the President and the Prime Minister will carry on their naval conversations at an altitude of 4,000 feet above sea level, on an eminence overlooking the region in which more than i three centuries ago a small band of adventurous explorers established the first English colony in America, at Jamestown. Whether Mrs. Hoover will spend the week-end in the camp with Ishbel MacDonald, daughter of the premier. will be determined after con- ! suiting Miss Ishbel. Mrs. Hoover has not planned to go, but if her ’ guest prefers camp life with her : father to a quiet week-end at the i White House, the first lady is pre- : pared to accede to her wishes. The list of camp guests has not been completed.

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PAGE 13

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