1935 – The Year of Records

    The year 1935 was a notable one in the history of commercial aviation. It was also a notable year for aviation enthusiasts with record flights and performances. Amelia Earhart set the pattern on January 11, when she made the first solo flight from Honolulu to Oakland, with her Lockheed Vega. On the 15th of that month, Major James Doolittle, with two passengers aboard flew an American Airlines plane from Los Angeles to New York City, nonstop, in eleven hours fifty-nine minutes, just barely breaking the twelve-hour mark for commercial transports. This record was broken a month later with an American Airlines crew who made the trip in eleven hours and thirty-four minutes. 
     Other achievements during the year included Laura Ingalls setting new women’s records for transcontinental flights in both directions. The Keys brothers set a new endurance record when they stayed in the air 533 hours with their Curtiss Robin. Two Army balloon specialists soared to a height of 72,395 feet with the National Geographic’s 3,700,000 cubic foot balloon. In November, the media featured the saga of Lincoln Ellsworth and his pilot, Herbert Hollick-Kenyon, as they made their way across 2,000 miles of Antarctica to the South Pole. 
     One of the most coveted of all records is for the maximum speed over a three-kilometer course. The French had practically monopolized the record from 1906 to 1935, when Howard Hughes sped his Hughes Special 352 mph. His record stood for a little over two years, when the 
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