Flight

Otto Ross, 98, says he’s one of the few people left who witnessed Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon’s 1931 achievement of the first nonstop, trans-Pacific flight.

No one really knew where Pangborn and Herndon would land after they took off from Japan; they didn’t have a radio on the plane to save on weight.

“Mrs. Pangborn (Clyde’s mother) and his brother (Percy), who was a jeweler in Wenatchee, were convinced he was going to land in Wenatchee,” Ross (’49 Hort.) says. “It was just electrifying that something like this would happen.”

Ross says Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic got so much press, but … » More …