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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 0030.PDF
A Stratoliner above Lake Mead, the world's largest reservoir. The Boulder Dam is below the aeroplane, in the foreground. SUN-RACERS AND SKY-CHIEFS The World's Largest Reservoir : Flying in the Stratoliner : 90lb. "Ministering Angels" By GRIFFITH BREWER, President of th«f Royal Aeronautical Society. WHEN England is at war and her utmost effortis directed to'iwjaujse the unscrupulous attacksof the invader, it is still necessary, if she is to hold her own after the war, for her to keep in touch with the advance of civil aviation in America. With her characteristic energy America continues her full- scale aircraft research in spite of the distraction of the Presidential election and she still finds time and material for the expansion of her munitions industry, which she is devoting to the aid of her sadly battered friends on the opposite shores of the Atlantic. After a somewhat nerve-racking passage on an un- named ship from a western port in England, I felt that I required a peaceful holiday before getting down to work, so I welcomed Dr. Stefansson's suggestion that I should try out the Boeing Stratoliner which had re- cently been introduced in some of the regular schedules of the Transcontinental and Western Airways" and on the Pan American Airways, otherwise known as TWA and PA A. So I took my ticket to San Francisco by the TWA, and after a short stay at Dayton and at Kansas City, boarded the twin-engined "Grand Canyon Flight 3 " at Kansas City at 8 a.m. on Octo- ber 14th. The flight was uneventful but just the restful tonic I required and I felt as fresh as a daisy when Mr. Tor$ Reed met me at Oakland Airport on Sa*f ~Fran- cisob Bay at 6.41 that some evening. I had changed planes at Boulder City, where Flight 3 continued on Los Angeles, and I was interested to see, when flying over the Grand Canyon and Boulder Dam, that the water above the dam, which five years ago I had described as looking like a yellow puddle, had now become the brilliantly blue hundred-mile long Lake Mead, the world's largest reservoir. I had not been able to use the Stratoliner on the journey out to the coast, but I looked forward td" flying fn it on the stage from Albuquerque to Kansas City on my return flight, so after a four-day stay, during which Mr. Reed drove me to the Yosemite Valley, I left the San Francisco Air Port for Boulder City, inspected the world's highest dam, both inside and outside, and left Boulder City Air Port at 2.50 p.m. to fly back over the Grand Canyon to Albuquerque where, after a four- hour wait, I should catch the Stratoliner for Kansas City. The day was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky and visibility clear for fifty miles or more. We flew over the Boulder Dam and then along the north border of the Grand Canyon. I looked down into the maze of chasms which converge on the Colorado River three
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