Once-Hated German Ace now is Hit of Air Races

ONCE-HATED GERMAN ACE NOW IS HIT OF AIR RACES

   CLEVELAND, Sept. 2 (AP)—A pilot who once was one of America's most feared war-time enemies is making a different kind of a conquest at the 1931 national air races here.
   He is Major Ernst Udet of Germany, and he has not only captured the admiration of thousands of spectators with his unprecedented
stunting, but has come close to stealing the show.
   On the ground, Major Udet, short and stocky and neatly dressed, looks and acts like any conservative business man. But in the air he
makes the crowd gasp as he slips his scarlet ship, which he himself designed, through stunts that no one but a champion daredevil would attempt.
   Udet and the rest of the more than 400 civilian and service pilots were held on the ground today by a steady rain that forced postponement of the program. On other days, however, Udet performed loops,
rolls and banks so close to the ground that the least mistake in judgment or air bump would send him crashing in an instant. His most spectacular stunt is to take off and fly across the field with one wing almost touching the ground.
He closes his exhibitions by stopping his motor at a thousand feet, making three loops and landing with a dead stick—an idle propeller.
   Other pilots of the foreign team, and many of the Americans, are accredited with as difficult and skilful antics, but Udet's low flying captures the fancy of the spectators.
   During the war Udet was officially listed as shooting down 63 Allied planes. One of the pilots he shot down behind the German lines was Common Pleas Judge Wanamaker, now of Akron, O. The German ace
has the number tag of the Akron jurist's plane to present to him if he
appears at the races this week. Judge Wanamaker inscribed the
tag at the time he was captured, when Udet landed and gave him first aid.
   Udet also has met at the air races William Waldmueller of Cleveland, who once saved his life. Waldmueller, stationed near Soissons, France, where Udet was forced down, warned the flier of a poison gas area and ran with him to a cave.
   There will be a double program of races tomorrow to make up for the postponement of today's events, among them a number of straightaway speed dashes.

The Sandusky Register (Sandusky, Ohio), September 3, 1931, p 1