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44                      U.S. AIR SERVICES         November, 1931

                         [[photograph]]
LATEST TYPE OF CURTISS FALCON OBSERVATION AIRPLANE FOR ARMY AIR CORPS

  Navy Buys 18 Two-Place Observation Planes from Berliner-Joyce

   A CONTRACT for $463,700 has been awarded to the Berliner-Joyce Aircraft Corporation of Baltimore, Maryland, for 18 two-place observation airplanes, convertible for land or sea operation. This latest development of the B/J Corporation has been perfected to fill a need for an airplane of less weight and smaller size than the observation machine now in use, and at the same time one capable of being operated either from the catapults of battleships and cruisers as a seaplane or as a landplane on the carriers. The performance tests of the new type plane, known as the XOJ-1 were carried through at the Naval Air Station, Anacostia, D.C. The XOJ-1 is the second experimental machine which the Navy has purchased from this company, the first being an XFJ-1, which was a single seater biplane fighter.

   Maj. Temple Joyce, executive chairman of the Berliner-Joyce Aircraft Corporation, who was an active pilot on the western front during the war, serves as his own test and demonstration pilot on the various types of machines which he produces for the Navy, the Army, and for commercial use.

   He is a close harmonizer, fond of aquatic sports, has extraordinary skill in turning waffles over to his week-end guests, flies in a way to win encomiums from both Army and Navy pilots, and steps out of a 10,000-foot power dive looking like a mere vice-president.

   TRANSAMERICAN AIRLINES CORPORATION will inaugurate 80-minute mail, passenger and express service with 14-place trimotored Fokker planes between Detroit and Cleveland via Toledo, on November 9th, R.C. Marshall, president, announces. It will utilize the Detroit City Airport and Cleveland's Municipal Field with Toledo's Transcontinental Port serving as an intermediate stop. The new overland service will supplement T.A.C.'s present non-passenger-carrying night air mail line linking these cities since April, 1929, and replaces its 55-minute trans-Lake Erie amphibian service between downtown Detroit and downtown Cleveland. The latter will suspend operations on the day preceding the new service's opening, in accordance with the company's annual winter policy, but will resume service April 1st, next.
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   Adolphus W. Gorton, chief pilot for Arthur Kudner, president of Erwin, Wasey & Co., advertising agency in the Graybar Building, New York, is spending his "ground" time in the service department of the agency. Mr. Gorton, a former Senior Lieutenant in the Navy, piloted the first plane to be hooked to the Navy dirigible Los Angeles. He was a member of the Schnieder Cup team in 1923 and for two years was on the Navy racing team. He resigned from the Navy in 1929 to accept a position on the research staff of the Curtis Publishing Company and to act as chief pilot for that company. When Mr. Kudner purchased a ten-passenger plane recently he obtained Lieutenant Gorton as chief pilot.
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   An interesting operating record is contributed by the Boeing Hornet-powered Model 40 planes now in service on United Air Lines' coast-to-coast route. After four years of service they are turning in an average of 113 miles an hour.
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   Major Leslie G. Mulzer, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., owner and operator of the Nepco Tri City airport, has purchased the assets of the Comet Engine Company at Madison, Wisconsin.
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   Thirty-one naval planes participated in the Four Field air show in the vicinity of New York City, on October 17th. The planes from VF Squadron were commanded by Comdr. J.E. Ostrander; VS squadron by Lieut. Comdr. Harry V. Baugh; and the planes from Quantico by Lieut. L. H. M. Sanderson.
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   Lodge plugs, made in England, were again used in the Supermarine Rolls Royce seaplane with which Flight Lieut. G. H. Stainforth attained a new world's air speed record of 108.8 miles an hour. They would seem to be good plugs.