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Between Dessau and Leipzig lie about 35 miles of placid German countryside. Last week, four gentlemen employed by the Junkers aircraft factory at Dessau, took the air and commenced shuttling back and forth between the two cities in two monoplanes which traveled as soberly and modestly as trolley cars.
One of the planes, carrying Pilot Friedrich Loose and Pilot Koehl, had failed to drop the "dolly" (auxiliary under carriage) from its tail upon leaving the ground as it was supposed to do automatically. After the first hour of shuttling, the dolly broke away imperfectly, forcing Pilots Loose and Koehl to earth. But their comrades, Pilots Cornelius Edzard and Johann Risticz, shuttled on, shuttled all afternoon, shuttled all that night, all the next day, all the next night.
At their second midnight they signaled that their hand gasoline pump was not functioning. They might soon have to come down. But their third dawn found them still shuttling, Dessau to Leipzig, Leipzig to Dessau, Dessau to Leipzig. . . .
At Warnemünde, a Baltic bathing resort, an anxious gentleman, hearing that the shuttlers had not yet descended, bustled into a passenger plane and whizzed down to Dessau. He was Herr Professor Junkers, designer and manufacturer of the monoplane J-33-L upon which Germany's attention was being increasingly focused.
After breakfast, word was sent up to Pilots Edzard and Eisticz of the J-33-L that they had broken the world's endurance record. They shuttled once more, consuming another hour at their leisurely speed of 70 m.p.h., then circled Dessau and settled upon the Junkers landing field. Their new record was 52 hr., 11 min., 46 sec. Professor Junkers beamed upon them and said: "We are not bragging and don't feel big after today's success . . . [but] we never undertake anything we don't carry out."
The J-33-L carried 3,700 kilograms (8,158 pounds) of gasoline and could have carried 300 kilograms more—enough even against headwinds, to carry it across the Atlantic, a feat which the J-33-L and perhaps a Junkers comrade, was prepared to try forthwith.
Amateur
When a wobbling balloon, twisted into the elongation of an overcooked sausage, coiled indefinitely over Manhattan, rumors started. Scanning its dilapidated hydrogen bag, messenger boys surmised that it had come all the way from South America. Stenographers announced that it was on its way to the North Pole. After it had drooped to earth near Flushing, L. I., the pilot, one Anthony Hensler, dissolved these rumors.
The balloon, he said, was the handiwork of one Morris F. Hamza, manufacturer of draperies. Mr. Hamza had made it by wrapping up hydrogen in some of his draperies, by attaching a propeller to two motorcycle motors contained in a wicker basket under the bag. When the ropes which held the basket chafed a hole in the bag so that the hydrogen escaped, and the stern bobbed up in the air, Pilot Hensler decided to come down. This he did by dragging a rope on the ground which members of the baying gallery, following his flight on foot or in motor cars, gleefully grabbed and pulled.
Anthony Hensler watched surly policemen pack the collapsible airship into a truck, so that it could be taken away for repairs.