Here we see about 35 seconds of the visit of
Lester Maitland and Albert
Hegenberger to Tucson on June
20, 1927. Their airplane is a Fokker C-2, 26-202, named "Bird
of Paradise". They are on their way to San Francisco, CA
to attempt a trans-Pacific flight to Hawaii.
This is a silent film. Use your cursor and
the menu bar below the image to control the movie.
The film misses their arrival and we begin
with the airplane being fueled from a truck. They had arrived
from El Paso, TX enroute to San Diego, CA. Next we see three
men standing in front of the airplane. On the left is Hegenberger,
center is Maitland and the gentleman on the right is unidentified.
Next, Hegenberger and the unidentified gentleman
walk under the port wing as several men attend to the port
engine. Chances are that among these men are Fred Herman,
Bradley Jones and Jim Rivers, all passengers in the C-2.
Rivers was assigned as the mechanic
for the trip.
Then the film
shows the airplane preparing to taxi for takeoff, the pilots
throwing the empennage around and momentarily obscuring the
camera with a cloud of dust.
They wrote "Honolulu or bust" in
the remarks column of the Register. Indeed, they began their
trans-Pacific flight from San Francisco on June 28 at 7:00
AM. They covered the 2,400 miles in 25 hours 49 minutes and
30 seconds.
Coming on the heels of Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic
flight a month earlier, their victory over the Pacific Ocean
made great news and ushered in a couple of more attempts
to cross the Pacific that summer. One of the more noted and
successful was that of Art
Goebel and Wm. Davis in the Travel Air "Woolaroc".
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UPLOADED: 04/03/07 REVISED: 04/21/19
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