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Twenty-eight days, 14 hours and 6 minutes is the briefest time in which man has ever gone around the world. Edward F. Schlee, Detroit dealer in oil, and William S. Brock, onetime airmail pilot, set out from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to lower this record, flying all the way in the Pride of Detroit, monoplane.
First Ten Days. See (TIME, Sept. 12.)
Eleventh Day. Eighty-eight actual flying hours since their departure from Harbor Grace in the Newfoundland dawn, the record wreckers slid skillfully to earth at the Dumdum Airdrome, Calcutta. Rejecting much well-meant hospitality they whipped out wrenches and overhauled the Pride of Detroit, Still in flying clothes, faces fringed with unshaven stubble, they shopped in the city, regretted a dinner invitation from the U. S. consul, went to bed early.
Twelfth Day. Flyers Schlee and Brock took another hop and came down in Rangoon, India. In far-off Washington a possible hurdle was raised across their path. Detroit relatives and friends requested the Navy Department to forbid the flight from Japan, pleading that neither man was a navigator and that their chances of reaching the tiny Midway Islands, over 3,000 miles from Tokyo, were remote; Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Douglas Robinson replied in hearty agreement, but said the Department had no authority over the movements of private individuals.
Thirteenth Day. For the first time the Pride of Detroit was lost.
Soon came despatches saying she had omitted Bangkok, flown farther on to Hanoi, French Indo-China.
Fourteenth Day. Schlee and Brock worked on their plane, slept at Hanoi and hopped off for Hongkong; slid safely down on British soil in China.
Fifteenth Day. Head winds tugged at the Pride of Detroit and cut her speed to 80 m.p.h. Undismayed she nosed ahead, to drop again to earth at Shanghai.
Sixteenth Day. Bidding China goodbye the Pride of Detroit darted toward Tokyo, in the land of little yellow men. She plunged into a thunder storm and for the first time in the trip was forced down; at Omura, Japan; undamaged; 600 miles from Tokyo.
Seventeenth Day. From Omura Flyers Schlee and Brock tried for Tokyo. Hampered by Japanese regulations forbidding them the air over fortified zones, hindered by a belching volcano, drenched by a rainstorm, they landed near Nago-saki. Downhearted, they inspected charts; figured that, to wreck the record, they had a little less than half way to go in about one third the required time.
Going up to London
Capt. Terence Tully and Lieut. James Medcalf, Canadians, reached that last haven of the eastward flyer, Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. Several days previously they had set out from London, Ontario, for a non-stop flight to London, England, for a $25,000 prize. Bad weather forced them back. Again they hopped; fog barred the way; they groped back to Washburn, Me. They flew to Harbor Grace.