France Captures the World's Distance Record.

France Captures the World’s Distance Record. THE “JOSEPH LE BRIX FLIES FROM NEW YORK TO SYRIA

WHEN Lieut. Maurice Rossi and M. Paul Codos landed at Rayak, Syria, 50 miles N.W. of Damascus, at 17.25 hrs. on August 7th, they had succeeded in setting up a new World’s Record for Distance in a Straight Line. They left New York at 10.41 hrs. two days previously, and made for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they lost sight of land and set their course for Cherbourg. All across the Atlantic Ocean they were forced to fly blind, never once seeing the sea, and they eventually passed over the French port at 18.00 hrs. on the next evening. At Le Bourget, Paris, a large crowd had assembled to cheer the aviators on their way, and at 20.22 hrs. the aeroplane

passed over the aerodrome. Their trans-European route lay by way of Munich, Vienna, Salonika, Rhodes and Latakia, and so to Rayak, Syria, where the machine came to earth on French mandated territory.

The aeroplane in which this marvellous flight was made was a Bleriot 110 monoplane, named ” Joseph le Brix,” and was designed especially for long-distance records by a young Italian, M. Phillipe Zappata, who has since returned to Italy. The power-unit which functioned so perfectly throughout the flight, and upon which so much depended, was a 600 h.p. Hispano Suiza, and it is interesting to note that Wakefield’s Castrol added its share to the reliability of the engine.

Measured in a grand circle, the distance flown by Rossi and Codos was 5,500 miles, which is about 200 miles further than the previous record flight of Sq. Ldr. Gaylord and Fit. Lt. Nicholetts in the Fairey Long-Range monoplane. In actual distance the Frenchmen flew 5,890 miles in 54 hrs. 44 mins. at an average speed of 107 m.p.h.

Following on the new Air Speed Record made by the Italian Agello recently, this new Distance Record has deprived Britain of two of her most coveted records. Unfortunately the British Air Ministry have decided not to take part in any further attempts to raise these figures, so that our prestige in aviation is in danger of being severely threatened.