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WE FLEW AROUND THE WORLD - FIRST!

a sheer, 1000-foot drop. It had taken the pair more than a week to reach a trading post on the edge of the Bering Sea and let the world know that they were still alive. But it was the end of the flight for them.

Attu to Tokyo: 2365 miles. The three remaining planes left for Asia on May 15, having averaged only 98 miles a day in the 40 days since leaving Seattle. Between Attu and Russia's Komandorski Islands, off Siberia, were 180 miles of Pacific Ocean, split by the International Date Line, Crossing it, we lost one day out of our lives, but we also became the first men to cross Pacific Ocean by air. 

We were 31 days behind schedule when we got to Tokyo on May 22. Everywhere in Japan there were wild welcomes. At one stop, 200 schoolchildren walked 54 miles to greet us, singing "My country, 'tis of thee." It was in Japan that I first began to realize the importance of our flight. This was no longer just a personal adventure; we were flying for the United States.

In Tokyo, we had the first news of the other world fliers. Britain's Squadron Leader A. Stuart Maclaren had crashed in Burma. Capt. Georges Pelletier-Doisy of France had survived an accident near Shanghai, but he was out of it. The crews from Portugal, Italy and Argentina were still waiting to start. 

Tokyo to Calcutta: 5575 miles. It was Marco Polo and Rudyard Kipling all the way - China, Siam, Indo-China, Burma. Each day's hop was 170 short; encounters with typhoon winds were brief but intense. As we flew down the Indo-China coast, a broken connecting rod forced Smith and Lieutenant Arnold, his mechanic, to land on an inland lagoon. The engine was a washout, and natives were hired to tow the plane up a jungle river to Hue, the old capital city of Vietnam, where a new engine, rushed up from Saigon, was installed.

It was a spectacular parade to Hue, led by a chieftain reclining in his royal barge under a sunshade, while concubines rolled and lighted his cigarettes and served him drinks and bananas. A tribesman beat out a tattoo on a tom-tom, to which the oarsmen in the sampans towing Smith's disabled plane dipper their paddles in rhythm. 

We were social lions wherever we stopped - heady nectar for us all. In Shanghai, the head of the Thieves' Union made us lifetime members of his guild. Bangkok officials wanted to stage a special beheading of prisoners in our honor. In Hanoi, ricksha boys delivered us by mistake to a house of ill fame instead of to the country club for an official dinner.

We landed at Calcutta at noon June 26.

Calcutta to London: 6343 miles. After exchanging pontoons for wheels, we left on July 1 and arrived in London on July 16, with 15 stops in between, flying a total of 83 hours and 28 minutes. We had good weather, plenty of rivers and railroads to