Richard Halliburton - Flying Carpet Expedition

Flying Carpet Expedition

In 1930 Halliburton hired pioneer aviator Moye Stephens on the strength of a handshake — for no pay, but unlimited expenses — to fly him around the world in an open cockpit biplane. The modified Stearman C-3B was named the Flying Carpet after the magic carpet of fairy tales, subsequently the title of his 1932 best-seller. They embarked on "one of the most fantastic, extended air journeys ever recorded" taking 18 months to circumnavigate the globe, covering 33,660 miles (54,100 km) and visiting 34 countries.

The pair started on Christmas Day 1930, making stops along the way, from Los Angeles to New York City, where they crated the airplane and boarded it on the oceanliner RMS Majestic. They sailed to England, where their extended mission began. They flew to France, then Spain, the British possession of Gibraltar, and on to Africa at Fez, Morocco (where Stephens performed aerobatics for the first air meet held in that country). They crossed the Atlas mountains and set out across the Sahara to Timbuktu, getting special permission to use fuel caches of the Standard Oil Company. While in Timbuktu, both were guests of celebrated Frenchman Pere Yakouba, an Augustinian monk who had years before fled from the distractions of modern society and become patriarch and a noted scholar of the community. They flew to their destination without mishap, then continued eastward, spending several weeks in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion, and continuing via Cairo and Damascus, with a side trip to Petra.

In Persia (now Iran) they met German aviatrix Elly Beinhorn, who was grounded by mechanical problems. They assisted her and then worked out shared itineraries. Later, Halliburton wrote a foreword to her book Flying Girl about these and other of her adventures in the air. Now exhausted, and their plane tiring, Stephens and Halliburton continued their eastward journey. In Persia, Crown Princess Mahin Banu had a ride in the airplane. In neighbouring Iraq, the young Crown Prince Ghazi, had a ride; they flew him over his school yard.

In India, Halliburton visited the Taj Mahal, which he had first visited in 1922. In Nepal, as The Flying Carpet flew past Mt. Everest, Halliburton stood up in the open cockpit of the plane and took the first aerial photograph of the mountain. To the delight of an amazed Maharajah of Nepal, Stephens performed daring aerobatics. In Borneo, Halliburton and Stephens were feted by Sylvia Brett, wife of the White Rajah of Sarawak. They gave her a ride, making Ranee Sylvia the first woman to fly in that country. At the Rajang River, they took the chief of the Dyak head hunters for a flight: he gave them 60 kilos of shrunken heads, which they dared not refuse but dumped as soon as possible. They were the first Americans to fly to the Philippines: in Manila the plane was again loaded onto a ship to cross the ocean. They flew the final leg from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

In Moye Stephens, Halliburton, a careful planner, had chosen his pilot well, and, in a reassuring letter to his parents (January 23, 1932), recited his many flight skills. Stephens, for instance, during one aerobatic display, astutely aborted a slow roll the moment he realized that Halliburton had not fastened his seat belt. Stephens later became chief test pilot of the Northrop Flying Wing, which evolved into today's B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The around-the-world trip had cost Halliburton over $50,000, plus fuel; in the first year, the book he entitled The Flying Carpet (after his valiant plane) earned him royalties of $100,000, in those depression-era days a remarkably large sum. Barbara H. Schultz' Flying Carpets, Flying Wings – The Biography of Moye Stephens (2011), besides recount the Flying Carpet Expedition from a flier's viewpoint as well as document Stephens (1906–1995) contributions to aviation history, contains Stephens' extended reports of the adventure; rare glimpses into the travel writer's art, these give historic balance to Halliburton's often romanticized renditions.