Page:The Fun of It.pdf/149

Rh Fifteen hundred times a day over the phone come similar questions, some comic, some—or what lies behind them—tragic. Even though there are fewer of them, those concerning flying weather come fre­quently enough. However, with the establishment of weather bureaus on the airways, most of the spot news type of inquiry go directly to the airport offices.

Dr. Kimball takes transatlantic flights seriously. During the preparations for several of the hops, I know he stayed up night after night, coordinating the data that came in, and giving to the fliers and their associates the best he could. I really think that he did not go to bed at all during the thirteen days when the Friendship remained at Trepassey.

When George Haldeman and Ruth Elder started out. Dr. Kimball had told them they would meet a storm near the Azores. They took the chance of running through it, however, rather than wait until a coming storm, then recorded in the Middle West, should sweep eastward across the country and make the fields here at New York impossible for a take­ off. With the heavy load of gasoline, the wheels of the plane would have bogged down on a rainsoaked runway.

That particular hazard is eliminated, as far as New York is concerned now, for an airport with 3000 feet runways which don’t become soft in rain, has since been finished.

Weather, in Dr. Kimball’s belief, also figured in the loss of Hinchcliffe, who started to fly the At­-