“Well, he’d proved how quickly you could get across the United States in an ordinary plane. Then he showed how you could cross with a glider, towed by an engined plane. Why, you ask. Well, in the first place, it attracted attention to gliders. And gliders are important in aviation. And then, if towed gliders are practical, they might solve the problem of carrying pay loads in cross-country flights. The glider could be loaded up, hitched to an airplane, and go from New York to any point west. That was the idea. Well, Hawks did attract attention. It took him six and a half days to get from San Diego to New York, stopping off at a lot of cities, and just generally bumming around the country. “In 1930 about the only spectacular flight that Frank Hawks made was the tour with Will Rogers, when they flew around the country seeking help for the drought victims. They covered 57 cities in 17 days, which meant a lot of work, because they put on a show wherever they stopped. Hawks, with his stage experience behind him, fitted in perfectly with the plan. He not only could fly, but he developed a patter, modeled after Will Rogers’ and came out chewing gum and swinging a lariat. “In 1931, having about exhausted record-breaking in the United States, our friend Mr. Hawks left these shores, and went off to Europe to sell speed and airplanes to that continent. No sooner had he landed than he started to break their records, too. The first one to fall was the speed record from London to Berlin, a distance, of 600 miles, which he made in 2 hours and 57 minutes. This was just about half the time that the regular passenger planes take. He had a light tail wind behind him, to help him, and a bad fog over the channel to hinder him. He flew the whole distance by compass. “About a week later the United States again heard from Frank Hawks. They heard that he’d dined in three European capitals on the same day. Left Bourget before breakfast, had breakfast in London, kippers, I suppose, or kidneys, at the Croydon Field. That was about 9:30. He left Croydon for Berlin, and got there 3 hours and 20 minutes later, in time for lunch at the Tempelhof Airdrome. He flew back to Paris, for tea at Le Bourget, and then motored into the city for a good dinner. The dinner he didn’t pay for. It was on some friends who had bet him that he couldn’t make it. He did. Don’t bet against Frank Hawks. It isn’t good business.