"Rendezvous"

In April 1924 a rugged bunch of United States Army Air Service aviators were the first to circumnavigate the globe by air. These intrepid aviators pressed on with little in the way of navigation and communication aids or weather reporting, in fuel-heavy, fabric covered wooden airplanes through cold, heat, fog, cloud, ice and storms. The painting depicts the main players in a drama that took place during the dangerous North Atlantic crossing on August 3, 1924. To communicate with a ship the command aircraft would fly low and drop a written message onto its deck. While the New Orleans flies on, the Chicago drops a message to alert the Captain of the U.S.S. Billingsley that aircraft No.3, the Boston, has gone down at sea.