Congratulations!

As advocates of speed and endurance records, we cannot ignore the magnificent achievement of American pilots Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager, who flew non-stop round the world in the improbable Teledyne Continental-powered Voyager monoplane in just over nine days, at 115.8 mph. It reminds us of how, when Russia claimed the absolute distance flight record, CG Grey of The Aeroplane got his technical staff onto their slide-rules (no pocket calculators then!) to prove that, unless it had landed secretly to re-fuel, their machine’s achievement was impossible. This may not have been the best way of improving East/West relationships, but it did uphold Britain’s records of 5309 miles by a Fairey monoplane in 1932, followed by 7158 miles by a special Vickers Wellesley in 1936. By 1962, a USAF B-52H had flown non-stop for 12,532 miles. Now Rutan and Yeager have increased this to a fantastic 25,012 ntiles — aviation’s last “first”, you might say! Congratulations!