WALTER BROOKINS.
Walter Brookins is one of the youngest of noted aviators. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1890, and went to school to Miss Katherine Wright, sister of the Wright brothers. Young Walter was greatly interested in the experiments made by the Wrights, and Orville one day promised him that when he grew up they would build a flying machine for him. Brookins appeared at Dayton in the early part of 1910, after several years’ absence, during which he had grown up, and demanded the promised flying machine. The Wrights met the demand, and developed Brookins into one of the most successful American aviators.
Brookins’s first leap into prominence was at the Indianapolis meet, in June, 1910, where he made a new world’s record for altitude, 4,803 feet. This being beaten soon after in Europe, by J. Armstrong Drexel, with 6,600 feet, Brookins attempted, at Atlantic City, in September, to excel Drexel’s record, and rose to a height of 6,175 feet, being forced to come down by the missing of his motor.
On September 29, 1910, he left Chicago for Springfield, Ill. He made two stops on the way for repairs and fuel, and reached Springfield in 7 hours 9 minutes elapsed time. His actual time in the air was 5 hours 47 minutes. The air-line distance between the two cities is 187 miles, but as Brookins flew in the face of a wind blowing 10 miles an hour, he actually travelled 250 miles. During the journey Brookins made a new cross-country record for America in a continuous flight for 2 hours 38 minutes.