Page 30 - August 2015 Volume 9, Number 8

the Beechcraft was waved into position for takeoff. The moment of truth had finally arrived.
The C17R’s engine rumbled impatiently as the flagman yelled to Louise, “One minute!” She eased the throttle forward to 800 rpm. “Fifteen seconds!” the flagman screamed. She inched the throttle forward a little more. “Good luck!” he yelled as he dropped a handkerchief. The R-975 responded eagerly as Louise pushed the throttle full forward. “The ship gathered speed down the concrete whiteness of the runway. Faster and faster we rolled until with a thunderous paean of triumph, the engine lifted the earth-bound wheels clear, and we, too, became a part of the night,”5 Louise recalled years later. Floyd Bennett Field quickly disappeared into the darkness.
After one hour in the air, Louise and Blanche were glad to see the horizon behind them begin to glow as the sun began its slow climb above the eastern horizon. The aviators were unsure of their position because a layer of fog blanketed the ground, denying them an early opportunity to check the Beechcraft’s groundspeed between pre-planned checkpoints. Just as Louise had feared, the Lear radio proved useless due to an avalanche of static, preventing them from tuning in to radio stations. Another 30 minutes passed. Gradually a few holes in the fog bank revealed enough of the landscape below that Blanche guessed they were somewhere over Ohio. A few minutes later Blanche was thrilled to see an airmarker! It confirmed that the C17R was in Ohio airspace. Remarkably, after flying nearly two hours without any reference to the ground, Blanche calculated that they were only a mere 10 miles off course, Better yet, their groundspeed was about 211 mph.
Although Louise had told the newshawks in Wichita that she intended to fly the race with the Wright radial roaring at full throttle, she set power at 65% and continued flying at 8,000 feet toward the next
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KING AIR MAGAZINE • 29