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August, 1931      U.S. AIR SERVICES      41

the same. One will be straight ahead, one to the left, and one to the right. But they are taken so closely together that half of each overlaps. The same method of overlapping is followed throughout the aerial map-making, the cameras being so timed as to allow for this overlapping, which is necessary in making accurate maps of the country.
 Canada will be entirely mapped by air in the near future. At present the unknown regions, those which are being invaded by prospectors, are being done. Where water power developments are started, the aerial camera goes in to take pictures, for it saves considerable work for the engineers to be able to work from the photographs. In every way Canada is utilizing the aerial eye to increase her knowledge of her vast, unknown territories and her inestimable natural resources.

AM [Barreaby?]] invited to try controls

Akron Will Soon be Ready
IT is announced by the Navy Department that the U.S.S. Akron will be ready for her initial trial flight by Navy personnel during the latter half of August unless unforseen delays occur. Before this the contactor plans a christening or launching ceremony when the airship will be air borne for the the first time. After the christening, work on the ZRS-4 still will be required before the airship will be ready for her acceptance tests and trials. Trial flight pending acceptance by the Navy will be made under the supervision of a Board of Inspection and Survey, following in this the regular Navy procedure applied equally to surface vessels or aircraft. Flight trials probably will consist of five or six flights of various duration, including one of at least 48 hours, and will be to determine speeds, fuel consumption, endurance, checks on the structural integrity of all parts, and other data affecting the performance and general handling qualities of the airship. If the trials prove satisfactory, the ZRS-4 will be accepted by the Navy Department, and will be flown to Lakehurst and commissioned as the U. S. S. Akron and docked alongside of the Los Angeles. Thereafter the ship will be put through a "shaking down" period of several months before taking up regular duties with the Fleet. During the "shake-down," airplanes and other military apparatus will be added.

MILLS FIELD, scene of the preparation, test hops, and finally the dismantling of the Southern Cross, site of the 1930 Air Corps maneuvers and of the Air Corps defense of San Francisco against the Pacific Fleet, is no more, officially. The Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco has by ordinance changed the name to San Francisco Airport.

Women— American and Russian
THE Betsy Ross Corps is an organization of women interested in aeronautics. They held their first meeting in the Memorial Continental Hall, at the Capital, recently. Rear Admiral W. A. Moffett gave an address at that time that pointed out clearly the need for women in aeronautics and made reference to women who had helped to write its history.
 "Five years before General Washington became President," he said, "the first woman passenger ascended into the air. She was Madame Thible, a French woman who went up in a Montgolfier ballon from Lyons, France. And in aviation, Mrs. Hart O. Berg was the first woman to fly, taking off with Wilbur Wright at Le Mans, France. Harriet Quimby of Boston was the first American woman to receive a pilot's license as early as 1911. The following year she flew the English Channel, being the first of her sex to achieve such a feat."
 He pointed out that before the war there were not more than a dozen women pilots while now there are more than 400 with twice that number attending flying schools. Reports of air transport companies show a large percentage of women passengers. There are stewardesses on some of the lines, women airport managers, and hostesses.
 Admiral Moffett closed with an appeal for support of the bills before Congress that would bring the Navy and the Air Services up to the standard called for by the recent Navy Conference.
 While he was telling his American audience the need for women to take the place of men in the operation of the commercial airways should men be called to the front by a war, word came from Russia that the Soviet had given the women equal opportunity with men in military aviation. The bolshevik slogan boasts "Complete equality of the sexes in all fields of endeavor." A dispatch from Moscow states that so far only one woman has qualified as a capable military pilot, Nadejda Viadinirova Sumarhova. For eight years she has been known as one of the Red Army's aces. In 1925 she had a crash, physicians gave her up, but on the day she left the hospital she climbed into her seat in a military plane. She does not wear skirts, studies foreign languages as well as motor construction, and is a widow with a grown son.

In Honor of Hoiriis and Hellig
HOIRIIS AND HELLIG, transatlantic flyers, were honor guests at a dinner, in New York City on July 17, given by the Bellanca Aircraft Corporation who constructed the plane Liberty, and the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, manufacturers of the Whirlwind engine which carried them to Copenhagen. Among the invited guests:
Mayor James Walker; E. C. Hallenbeck, Mayor of Liberty, N. Y.; Ernest J. Hoos, chairman, reception committee of Liberty, N. Y.; Henry J. Johnson, commander, Disabled American Veterans; William Deegan, chairman of the Mayor's reception committee; Peter J. Brady, chairman of the Mayor's aviation committee; Guy W. Vaughan, president, Wright Aeronautical Corporation; Guiseppe Bellanca, president, Bellanca Aircraft Corporation; Charles H. Colvin, president, Pioneer Instrument Company; R. E. Gillmor, Sperry Gyroscope Corporation, and Lawrence A. Nixon, personal representative.

DR. ARTHUR F. TORRANCE, leader of the recent medical-scientific expedition into the Belgian Congo, left New York on July 14 on a Transcontinental & Western Airplane for his home in Los Angeles. Dr. Torrance was an associate of Lawrence of Arabia and served as personal physician to Trader Horn. He is carrying a pair of crocodiles to the University of California for study.

A THREE-KILOMETER straight away airplane speed course was opened east of Long Beach, Calif., in Orange County. It is the only course in the west recognized by the National Aeronautic Association and the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. It was laid out by the Union Oil Company with the cooperation of Nat H. Neff, county engineer. Florence Lowe Barnes, who is promoting aeronautics and the good-will of the Union Oil Company on the Pacific Coast, expects to use this speed course in trying to regain her title of the "fastest woman flyer," recently lost to Ruth Nichols.