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In 1938 Jacqueline Cochran in sheer indomitable determination unsheathed her challenge to Frank Fuller, the transcontinental record winner of the previous year, and in one of the hardest fought battles in the history of the race outflew her gallant competitor, and carried away the undying laurels of the victory. 

Victory such as this is no trivial circumstance. In the preparation of ships for such a race no detail of mechanical equipment or its insured operation under the terrific stress and strain to which it may be subjected, can safely be left in question. The intrepid flying racer leaves nothing to chance. Engine, ignition, cooling, lubrication, instrumentation, a thousand details must bear the minutest supervision, with thorough mechanical understanding. The planning of routes, the fueling and refueling, the gauging of winds, and navigation, are matters with which the uninitiate will do well not to gamble. 

In the coming race will be pitted the planes of these same to gladiators of the air, Frank Fuller and Jacqueline Cochran, in a new combat. Each have entered, and each will undimming confidence of success. 

Who will win, or whether we shall have perhaps a new and as yet unheralded victor, will be answered only when the sun shall have set on this memorable day of Saturday, September 2.

Drama? And Thrills?

Who can forget that memorable day in the Bendix Race of 1935. Bennie Howard that wizard of detail in race plane construction in duel with that King of Air Race Speed, Roscoe Turner -- twenty two seconds variance in finishing time in a race of hours and hours duration, of more than two thousand miles in distance at an average of what to the landsman is a terrifying flying speed. 

What stories can be told, what experiences recounted to excite the imagination of the most voluble romanticist.

When the take-off has been safely maneuvered, and the plane has straightened out, up in the skies on perhaps an heretofore uncharted course, maybe above the clouds or in the upper stratosphere out of sight of land or sea, hour after hour alone in a vast lonesome world, but intensively alert to every instrument variation, and feeling every pulse in engine operation, striving for distance and sureness of course, then is their hope that this may be their day, and that just ahead is the entrancing moment when their efforts have been crowned success. 

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