“The next month, on June 17, Frank felt hungry again, and maybe tired of the food he’d been getting, anyway. So he got into his plane, at London, just after breakfast; had luncheon in Rome, and got back in time for tea in London. He’d made the round trip in 9 hours and 44 minutes, actual flying time. Of course, a man has to take time out to eat. Getting to Rome and back meant that he’d beaten the Alps twice. He enjoyed that trip. He’d had a head wind with him all the way, and was pretty glad about beating the Alps. They look less mighty and dangerous when you’re looking down at them from a safe plane, in the cleat sunshine. Almost gentle. “Speedy Hawks decided to come back to America. But he didn’t come back to rest. He went right on breaking records, and making up new ones to be broken. In January of 1932 he flew from Agua Caliente to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 13 hours and 44 minutes. That was called his famous three-flag flight. It was a grand flight, too, and the first of its kind to be flown in one day. It wasn’t non-stop; he’d stopped at Oakland, California and Portland, Oregon, both on the way up and the way back, for fuel. The trip was about 2,600 miles long, and he’d averaged about 180 miles per hour. “Hawks is certainly accomplishing what he set out to do. He’s never had to bail out, and he’s never had a serious accident. He was pretty well banged up when he didn’t clear the ground and crashed into some wires early in 1932, but he pulled out of that all right. Flying fast was no more dangerous than flying slowly, if a man could handle his plane. What the country needed was speed and more speed, and Hawks gave it to them. It helped, too. The whole commercial system in the United States has speeded up. Two hours have been cut off the transcontinental trip, and more will undoubtedly be cut off. In June of ’32 Hawks was made Lieutenant Commander Hawks. And it’s no more than he deserves. He’s a great lad. “And so is Jimmie Doolittle. There’s some say that Jimmie is the greatest flyer of them all, but he says he isn’t. I don’t know whether we should take his word for it or not. He may be prejudiced. Anyway, he’s one of the best liked flyers in the country. James Doolittle is a little fellow. That is, he’s short. Just 5 feet 2, but every inch a scrapper, and every inch nerve. “Anybody who talks about Doolittle likes to tell the story of the time he went down to Chile for the Curtiss Company to demonstrate a new type of flying plane to the government. The Chilean government was pretty particular. It wanted only the best, so it decided to have five countries compete in a mock fight, England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States, and the plane that won the battle would be the one bought for the Chilean army.