men being jailed. They were eventually released with a $1,000 fine, but they were allowed only one chance to take off in Miss Veedol; if they returned to Japan, the plane would be confiscated and the men would return to prison. Other complications hampered the flight. Pangborn and Herndon's "painstakingly prepared" maps and charts were stolen by the nationalist Black Dragon Society, who wanted a Japanese pilot flying Japanese equipment to be the first to complete the endeavor. They also had extremely precise calculations for their flight, leaving no room for error; Miss Veedol had to be overweighted with fuel, far beyond the manufacturer's recommendation (650 gallons stock was expanded to 915 gallons), and they would have to abandon their landing gear after takeoff to reduce drag. Pangborn and Herndon finally took off on October 4, 1931, from Sabishiro Beach, Misawa, Aomori, Japan. Their destination was Seattle, Washington, just under 5500 miles (8,500 km) away, a distance exceeding Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris by 2,000 miles. Three hours after takeoff, a problem arose: the device intended to jettison the landing gear partially failed. The gear was ejected, but the two root struts remained. Pangborn had to climb out onto the wing supports barefoot at 14,000 feet to remove them. Later, the engine nearly quit as Herndon neglected his responsibility to pump fuel from the fuselage tanks to the wing tanks, which feed the engine. Within a few hours, the upper tanks again went dry—this time the engine did quit running. Because there was no built-in starter, Pangborn dove the airplane from cruise altitude and pulled out at to get the engine started. They almost ran into Mount Rainier when Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle were fogged in and Herndon again had the airplane off course. They decided to fly to Boise, where they could claim the furthest distance record along with the nonstop transpacific. Due to fog they could not land in Boise, Spokane, or Pasco, Washington, so they turned back to Wenatchee, Washington. They belly landed on a strip cut out of the sagebrush on Fancher Field near what is now East Wenatchee. Pangborn's mother, brother, and a reporter from the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun had already assumed Wenatchee was their destination and were there waiting for their arrival. The flight from Japan took a total of 41 hours and 13 minutes. The Pangborn-Herndon Memorial, dedicated