COSTES TO FLY WESTERN ROUTE OVER ATLANTIC
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Famous French Birdmen Use Tri-Motored Plane On Dangerous Hop
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HOLDS DISTANCE RECORD
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Attempted Flight Last Year But Turned Back And Landed Safely
NEW YORK, May 31—(AP)—A pilot since he was 17, Capt.
Dieudonne Costes will dare the dangers of the Atlantic in the most difficult feat of his 19 years of flying.
The French war ace plans to fly westward from Paris to New York, a project that has cost many lives and in which he himself failed last year.
Success will climax a flying career that had its beginning when Louis Bleriot made the first flight across the English channel in 1909 and fired the ambition of Costes, a 16-year-old engineering student, to become an aviator.
He won his pilot's license a year later, but the war sent him into the conflict where he accounted for five enemy ships and seven balloons.
An international hero, his fame rests on exploits in the last four years, starting in 1926 when Capt. Rignot and he set a world's distance record in a 3,313-mile non-stop flight from Paris into Persia.
Late the next year, with Joseph Lebrix, he started an aerial odyssey from Paris down the west coast of Africa, across the south Atlantic to South America and eventually thru North America, Asia and Europe. Except for crossing the Pacific by ship the round-the-world tour was made in flight.
Last year, with Maurice Bellonte, he attempted the Paris-
New York flight, but turned back west of the Azores and landed after flying 3,100 miles. Head winds had forced them back.
Two world record performances followed, a non-stop flight of 4,948.59 miles to Manchuria and a closed circuit record of 4,987 miles in 53 1/2 hours.
Spurred by the arrangements of Capt. Kingsford-Smith, Australian war ace, to fly from Ireland to New York, Costes has hurried test flights on his trl-motored ship to race the Australian across the ocean.
There have been no successful heavier-than-air craft flights across the north Atlantic from continent to continent in a westerly direction without stop. The Bremen's flight began in Ireland and ended at Greenley Island.
The Lima News (Lima, Ohio) - Sunday, June 1, 1930
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