General Frank A. Armstrong motioned for me to take the controls of the Superfort. He picked up his microphone and, in his soft North Carolina drawl, began calling one of the four B-29s strung out in column formation just short of Attu, Alaska, en route to Washington on the first nonstop flight from Japan.
      "Hello, Hyena Two, this is General Armstrong. Is that you, 'Sandy'?" Colonel K. O. Sanborn of Annapolis, Maryland, pilot of the second Superfort, said it was.
      "Listen closely, Sandy," said the general in a tone portending a momentous decision. "You put 'Stormy' Strom (the flight weather forecaster) down in the nose of your airplane and once every minute for the next half hour I want you to give him a good swift kick in the pants. That's an order!"
      Every crew member heard the message and the tension was broken. For nearly five hours everyone from the general to the enlisted men had become more and more downhearted. The weather forecast, made not only by our own weatherman, Captain Gordon A. "Stormy" Strom, of Harris, Minnesota, but by all of the experts between Japan and Washington, had predicted a tail wind of 30 miles an hour on this first leg of the great circle route between Japan and Washington. But the wind was exactly opposite -- about 45 miles an hour right on our nose.
      We passed Attu and it seemed we were crawling. It was almost dark and we could just see the barren rocks of that Aleutian outpost. A half hour past Attu, Lieutenant John Courtwright of Washing D.C., on of our two navigators, called me back of his small worktable.
      "Don't say anything to the old man yet," he smiled, "but I think we've not only lost the head wind but picked up a tail wind."
      Johnny called up the other navigator, Captain Louis Collins of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was resting in the back of the airplane. Together they began taking fixes, plotting our position every few minutes by means of stars and radio. Finally with a grin a mile wide Johnny said, "It checks all right. With a 40 mile an hour wind, dead on our tail, we're doing about 285 miles an hour and we'll make it okay if it holds."
      The wind held and even became stronger behind us. The four Superforts picked up speed, raced over Kodiak and Sitka and finally into National Airport at Washington on the night of November 1st. The total time from Hokkaido, Japan, to Washington was 27 hours and 30 minutes.
      The next morning's newspapers hailed the trip as heralding long-distance commercial flights over that and similar great-circle routes. I read the reports with much interest because all through the weary flight I had thought of the progress that must be made before commercial lines could attempt such flights on regular schedules. It was pure luck that the wind changed when it did and enabled us to make up for lost time. That luck made the trip possible, and extensive preparation by General Armstrong gave it some measure of safety. But commercial lines cannot bank on luck. And they cannot have the safety facilities provided Gereral Armstrong witout prohibitive expense.
      We could not have made it to Washington without a helping wind. If there had been a dead calm over the entire route we would have run out of gas just as we arrived over Washington, leaving no time for an approach or for an instrument letdown if the weather had been bad. We needed an average tail wind on the eintire route of at least 12 miles an hour to give us a sufficient gasoline reserve on reaching Washington.
      Even though the prevailing winds on the great-circle route from Japan to Washington are westerly, winds out of the east are not rare. An airliner must be prepared to buck head winds and still arrive at its destination not only with sufficient gas to make an instrument letdown but with enough reserve to proceed to an alternate airport where the weather is clear. And, of course, airliners must fly the other way too -- from Washington to Japan, against prevailing winds.
      We carried 10,500 gallons of gasoline, much more than a Superfort normally takes on, because General Armstrong had substituted lightweight fuel tanks from the wings of C-46 Commandos for the heavier self-sealing smaller capacity combat tanks normally carried in the B-29s. Also he had given us more weight for gasoline by removing all the heavy armament on the bombers, yet we arrived in Washington with only 800 gallons; and that was due to a strong helping wind. We had planned to arrive with only 300 gallons.
      Plainly, then, what the airlines would need for such a long trip would be a larger airplane than the B-29, with a gasoline load and a range that would permit reaching the destination with a reserve despite head winds.
      The longer the trip the more comfort would be necessary for the passengers. The airplane would have to be large enough to contain sleeping, dining and recreation facilities. A foolproof heating system is a must. The B-29 has an air-conditioning and heating system coupled with its pressurized cabin that is among the best in existence today; yet it broke down in the cold arctic air. Even with our winter flying clothing we were cold the whole trip. I looked back once aqnd saw Captain Robert McConnell of Monroe, Louisiana, our flight engineer, with his feet high in the air, pressed against the voltage regulator cover. He claimed the cover was just a little warmer than the rest of the airplane.
      The long range commercial airplane must be pressurized like the B-29 to enable stratosphere flight over the worst weather. As incidentally, the higher the long-range airplane flies the more gas it needs.
      A distinct improvement in weather forecasting is another necessary development for long-range flights. The weather we encountered did not even remotely resemble the forecast. But there are two reasons for poor forecasting. One is that it is not yet anything approaching an exact science, and the other is that meteorologists are not furnished enough data to appy efficiently what little knowledge they do have. Future long-distance airline operations must have better forecasting to make flights safer and schedules surer.
      Perhaps the most comforting minutes during the long flight from Japan were the times when a Superdumbo rescue plane sailed along beside us in formation, keeping watch just in case we were forced to ditch or bail out over the North Pacific. Three such airplanes, B-29s equipped with the latest rescue equipment, followed us over themost dangerous stretches. At other pints B-17s hovered over a point they knew we would pass. They carried motor-driven lifeboats and were prepared to drop them to us if we were forced down.
      Every 500 miles over water there was a Navy surface vessel, providing not only rescue facilities but also serving as a navigation check point. Over the wastes of Canada, the entire Air-Sea Rescue system was alerted for us, and we were plotted clear across the continent. Even when we took off from Hokkaido, an airplane circled at the end of the runway, waiting to spot our position in the event of a crash.
      Airlines must have all these facilities and more. But they could not provide them because of the terrific cost. Nets of radio beams, radio-direction finding systems, homing radio beacons located on anchored boats and a "Coast Guard of the Air," an Air-Sea Rescue organization, must be furnished.
      (The Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization now meeting in Montreal has this matter high on its agenda. -- ed.)
      Our trip was on the ragged edge from beginning to end - in other words if anything had gone wrong it would have been just too bad for crews and airplanes. For instance we were so heavily loaded (70 tons) that had one engin failed or partly failed on take-off, we would have had to carsh straight ahead. With our weight we had no chance whatsoever of sustaining flight on three engines. hat condition existed until we had burned enough gasoline and lost enough weight (at 6 pounds per gallon) to permit three-engine flight. Then there was another period when we would have been forced to ditch or bail out if two engines had failed.
      I envision the long-range airliner as a six- or possibly eight-engine airplane, capable of carrying a tremendous gas load, yet at the same time able to sustain flight if one or even two engines failed on take-off or at some other critical time.
      It must be able to operate through all weather and all temperature ranges. Our four B-29s, veterans of the air war over Japan, had come from the tropical climate of Guam, then to the mild autumn of Hokkaido and through the sub-zero temperatures of Alaska and Canada to the 65-degree "heat" at Washington. Any great-circle route between temperate countries has to pass through sub-zero ranges.
      Throughout the entire trip Techical Sgt. Genero Tamex of Mexico and Staff Sgt. Jay Hood of Pittsburgh, the two radio operators were in constant touch with Army Airways Communications stations. Even when we were over Alaska they were still talking to Guam. They began working Washington shortly after we crossed the Canadian Rockies.
      M/Sgt. Clinton R. Dudley of St. Louis, Missouri, our crew chief, spent most of the trip close to Tamex, who was a Mexican announcer over Station KRIS at Corpus Christi, Texas, before the war. Dudley was expecting a message announcing the birth of a child. His wife was in a hospital at Bakersfield, California, and he had been informed prior to takeoff that the baby was expected to arrive during the flight. However, no message came through, and Dudley did not know until he reached Washington that he was the father of a boy.
      Worried as he was about his wife, Dudley still fretted over the pet engines he had babied ever since the planning stages of the flight. Over Saskatoon, Canada, three of thee four engines began backfiring due to the very low power setting being used to conserve gasoline. A backfire is very serious in a B-29 because it is the primary cause of engine fires. Dudley and McConnell, the engineer, finally worked out a power combination that stopped the backfires and still saved gas.
      At Washington National Airport a reported remarked to Dudley: "A few years from now and you might have bought a ticket and flown home to your wife on a superairliner."
      "Sir," Dudley replied with unnecessary deference, "I love my wife but they'll have to improve a lot of things even before I ride free. That trip worried me more than any of my combat missions."
      The reporter glanced questioningly at General Armstrong. The general nodded - and for him that was an eloquent speech.
      (Colonel Akerson has just been relieved from active duty and is now assistant to the publisher of the Boston Herald-Traveler. He was a reporter on these papers when he entered the Army Air Corps in 1940 and he had had no previous flying experience. But he rose rapidly and was placed in charge of all four-engine training in the Eastern Flying Training Command at Maxwell Field, Alabama. Last June he went to Guam as the deputy chief of staff to General Armstrong with the 315th Wing, which specialized in night radar precision bombing of Japan. Colonel Akerson piloted five of these missions. Born in Minneapolis, he is the son of the late George Akerson, secretary to President Hoover. He is 28 years old and lives with his wife and 4-year-old son at Wellesley Hills, Mass.)