The historic first flight took place on September 19, 1928, at the Packard proving grounds in Utica, Michigan, just a year and a month from the day Dorner agreed to join the Packard team. Woolson and Walter E. Lees, Packard's chief test pilot, used a Stinson SM-1DX "Detroiter." The flight was so successful, and later tests were so encouraging, that Packard built a $650,000 plant during the first half of 1929 solely for the production of its diesel engine. The factory was designed to employ more than 600 men, and 500 engines a month were to have been manufactured by July 1929.[4] [Illustration: Figure 3.--Alvan Macauley (left), President of the Packard Motor Car Co. and Col. Charles A. Lindbergh with the original Packard diesel-powered Stinson "Detroiter" in the background, 1929. (Smithsonian photo A48319D.)] The engine's first cross-country flight was accomplished on May 13, 1929, when Lees flew the Stinson SM-1DX "Detroiter" from Detroit, Michigan, to Norfolk, Virginia, carrying Woolson to the annual field day of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at Langley Field. The 700-mile trip was flown in 6-1/2 hours, and the cost of the fuel consumed was $4.68. Had the airplane been powered with a comparable gasoline engine, the fuel cost would have been about 5 times as great.[5] On March 9, 1930, using the same airplane and engine, Lees and Woolson flew from Detroit, Michigan, to Miami, Florida, a distance of 1100 miles in 10 hours and 15 minutes with a fuel cost of $8.50. The production engine, slightly refined from the original, received the first approved type certificate issued for any diesel aircraft engine on March 6, 1930. The Department of Commerce granted certificate no. 43 after the Packard Company had ground- and flight-tested this type of engine for approximately 338,000 hp hr, or about 1500 hr of operation.[6] [Illustration: Figure 4.--Dipl. Ing. Hermann I. A. Dorner, 1930. German diesel engine designer, was responsible for the Packard DR-980 aircraft engine. (Smithsonian photo A48645.)] [Illustration: Figure 5.--Capt. Lionel M. Woolson, 1931. Chief Aeronautical Engineer, Packard Motor Car Co. Designer of Packard DR-980 diesel engine. (Smithsonian photo A48645A.)] One of the early production versions powered a Bellanca "Pacemaker" which was piloted by Lees and his assistant Frederic A. Brossy to a world's nonrefueling heavier-than-air duration record. The flight lasted for 84 hours, 33 minutes from May 25 through 28, 1931, over Jacksonville, Florida. This event was so important that it was the basis of the following editorial, published in the July 1931 issue of _Aviation_,[7] which summarizes so well the progress made by the diesel engine over a 3-year period and the hope held for its future: