| Summary: | Russian Air Men May Fly Over City. Russian Air Men May Fly Over City Zooming past the half-way mark on their 6,000-mile nonstop flight across the "top of the world," three trail-blazing Russian aviators headed their red-winged monoplane toward Seattle and San Francisco over the wilds of Northern Canada yesterday. While messages from the plane— flying from Moscow to San Francisco—sped through the ether to Alaska and Seattle, secrecy shrouded activities of United States bureau in Seattle cooperating in the Soviet flight. The government radio station at Vancouver announced at 5:20 p.m. that the Russian flyers shortly before had given their position as over Athabasca Lake, on the river of that name, in the northeast corner of Alberta. Tom Hinman of Northwest Air Lines relayed the Vancouver report. Previously the flyers revealed they had flown over the MacKenzie River at Fort MacKenzie at 1:40 p.m. At that time they were 980 air miles northeast of Edmonton, according to the Associated Press. HOLDING TO SCHEDULE Keeping to its schedule, with an increasing speed as its gasoline load lightened, the plane was expected to pass near or over Seattle late Saturday night or early Sunday. As the thirteen-ton plane pushed southward, it was headed into areas overhung with clouds and possible rain storms. All along the Coast from far North Alaska to Eureka, Calif., rain and clouds marked the route of the aviators. Rain was falling at Dawson and Fairbanks to the north, and clouds hung over the McKenzie River district. It was raining, too, at Medford, Roseburg, Marshfield and Eureka. The same rainy weather faced the aviators in the Seattle area. United States weather bureau and army signal corps officials in Seattle—working night and day, aided in charting weather and keeping communication channels clear to the cabin of the plane where the three flyers sat at their controls. An ominous silence gave rise at first to reports that the plane was unheard from. But it developed the "silence" was merely part of the mystery which has surrounded the entire flight. A. A. Vartanian, chief engineer in charge of the flight, scorning sleep, kept to his post night and day in the signal corps office here. He refused to divulge messages he received and sent the intrepid flyers. A single message, given out by the Soviet consulate to International News Service in San Francisco, revealed that the flyers reported they had successfully ridden out of the danger that threatened them when ice formed on the wings of the plane as they soared 14,000 feet above the wastes surrounding the north pole. FOLLOW 123RD MERIDIAN The flyers, sources in Seattle disclosed, were following the 123rd meridian southward and intended to strike the coast at Vancouver, B. C., and Seattle. Vartanian was known to be preparing special weather charts and dispatching the information via signal corps radio to the plane. Working in an inner office at the signal corps headquarters in the Federal Office Bureau, Vartanian spoke at intervals into a shortwave radio telephone, giving instructions in Russian. His duties included contacts with the flyers at intervals of not less than three hours. Lawrence Fisher, United States meteorologist here, refused to comment on the bureau's operations, declaring, however, that the office was working both day and night in preparing special information. The first official announcement that the plane had passed the North Pole came with word at 3:51 a.m. yesterday that the flyers were 500 miles beyond the Pole. BARREN COUNTRY The planned course of the flight across 1,800 miles of rugged Canadian country and through what appeared to be cloudy and rain- filled country was to carry the flyers past Prince Patrick Island, over Banks Island into Northwest Territory, and across Great Bear Lake in the District of McKenzie on to the little outpost of Simpson and thence across more barren and open country to the Fraser River. The flyers apparently planned to follow the river into Vancouver, B. C., and head down the coast, over Seattle to San Francisco.
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