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POST New York City JUN 27 1939 20 PAY AND FLY TOMORROW FOR EUROPE POINTS [[line]] Dixie Clipper's Inaugural Trip Guarded by 5 Nations' Services [[line]] Scheduled transatlantic air service for paying passengers starts tomorrow. The Pan-American Airways Dixie Clipper is scheduled to take off at 3 P. M. from Port Washington, L. I., for the Azores, Lisbon and Marseilles, with twenty passengers and a crew of eleven. Aeronautical radio services of five nations, co-ordinated into a single operating unit, will form the communications and directional network to guard the flight. [[bold]] Due in Azores Thursday [[bold]] The Dixie Clipper is due at Horta, the Azores, Thursday morning. After an hour's stop it will continue to Lisbon. Following an overnight stay there, the clipper ill proceed to Marseilles, arriving according to the schedule at 7 A. M. Sunday from Marseilles. Weekly flights will continue through the summer, with the difference that beginning July 5 the departure time at Port Washington will be moved forward to 1 P. M. Since transatlantic flying is highly competitive, none of the rival nations was willing to authorize any other country to establish air bases, radio stations or other technical facilities on its soil. The problem has been overcome by exchange of facilities and the use of a uniform communications code on both sides of the ocean. [[bold]] Stations Share Guard [[bold]] For the first half of each eastbound flight, Pan-American's own stations at Port Washington and Baltimore stand primary guard, assisted by the Imperial Airways station at Bermuda. On the second half of the flight, the Portuguese stations in the Azores and at Lisbon, the contimental network of Air France and the Air Ministry stations of Britain stand regular guard. Surface vessels of Germany, Great Britain, France and the United States in the North Atlantic shipping lanes act as mobile weather stations for the clippers. Navigators of the clipper use special instruments-a "drift sight" and a bubble octant-to take routing sights on the sea below for a check on course and speed, and make "elestial fixes" y sights on the sun and stars. But in good weather and bad, the most important guide is radio. It was found that the radio beams used on domestic airlines were impractical over the ocean because of their 100-mile range. Instead the navigators use a high-frequency, or short-wave, directional guide whose construction and installation are still secret. TIMES New York City Jun 28 1939 [[bold]] ATLANTIC CROSSING [[BOLD]] Today marks the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Atlantic travel-with great ships of the air, swift, steady, spacious, carrying passengers on a schedule of a day and a night between the United States and Europe. Only a dozen years have passed since the days of Lindbergh, of Chamberlin, of Byrd. Yet by an amazing development in plane design, in engine power, in operating technique and in the magic of radio protection we have come to the way of a ship in the midst of the sea: an air-borne ship, riding high above the storm, in touch with coasts 2,000 miles away, able, as it speeds at three miles a minute, to converse with water-bound liners creeping at one-sixth its pace upon the surface far below. When the Dixie Clipper takes off this afternoon from Port Washington base of American Airways with the first pay passengers in the North Atlantic heavier-than-air service it will cruise into the protecting network of the radio of five nations. By means of the direction finders developed by the engineers of the airline, which has now flown 435,000,000 passenger-miles, its captain, in his swivel chair on the port side of the flight deck, will receive every thirty minutes reports of his position from the radio officer. Between his post and the pilot's chair the navigation officer will be able, through the necromancy of the new techniques, to plot the plane's course minute by minute at cruising speeds from 150 to 180 miles an hour. The Dixie and her sister Clippers blaze a long-awaited trail under the American flag. May they know only happy landings. [[drawing with caption "....ON A MODE[[RN]] MAGIC CARP[[ET]]]] CITIZEN Brooklyn, N. Y. JUN 28 1939 First Passenger Flight The first regular passenger flight in a heavier-than-air flying ship will begin this afternoon. The plane, which will carry some twenty passengers and eleven crew members, is the Dixie Clipper, one of the huge planes operated by Pan America clipper planes, one carrying mail and a second carying a number of newspaper writers. Today's departure, however, will be the first in which paying passengers will cross the Atlantic, as Pan America begins routine service to Europe. There are two very important phases of the Dixie Clipper's flight. One is that it gives the United States the lead in aerial trans-Atlantic commerce. That lead was held by Germany while dirigibles seemed the most successful airships for long voyages, but that leadership was destroyed with the burning of the Hindenburg. We have good reason to anticipate our future leadership with the successful operation of clipper planes across the Pacific, but the most dangerous, if narrower, Atlantic still remained to be conquered. French, German and British planes of large design have crossed the Atlantic, but none of those nations has been so efficient or so rapid as we in preparing for regular transocean service. Perhaps the war scare in Europe has had much to do with our priority, but, nevertheless, we shall have a head start on the field, and our Government has recognized the necessity of subsidizing the new means of transportation. Lack of proper subsidies in the past, to match those of other nations, has been largely responsible for our not holding a more prominent place in merchant shipping. The second important phase of the Dixie Clipper flight is that it will be made under the recent agreement, whereby Pan America, along with France, Germany and Britain, will give out all possible weather, radio direction and other service to planes of foreign origin. Actually, all nations have co-operated fully in aiding planes, whatever their nationality, but beginning with the Dixie Clipper's regular flight, the service will be routine. Pan America should have to provide weather information and radio direction for the foreign competitors. The European governments provide that service for planes; our Government provides it for ships at sea. It should for airplanes, too.
