At this point, however, the topographical features rapidly became of major dimensions and it was obvious that pipe line and road construction would be extremely difficult. As the flight progressed, the country became rougher and rougher until finally it is fair to say that it was, to all practical purposes, impassible. See Figures 41 to 50 inclusive and note from Map 3 their approximate position. At about the start of the rough country the airplane unfortunately began veering north of its intended course as a result either of an erroneous correction for drift or a change in the wind. Thus the flight was actually over the southern edge of Trans Jordan, rather than south of the border where it was indended to be. This, of course, became evident when the Wadi Araba was reached and the Gulf of Aqaba was seen to the south.

Fig. 42 Wadi Fajr

While it was unfortunate that the flight was not along the intended course, yet it was perfectly evident that the country to the south for many miles - as far as the eye could reach - was not greatly different from that over which the flight was made. All of the party, (i.e., Wolfe, Johnson., Chandler, and Bramkamp) realized that some passable route through these mountains could probably be worked out by sufficient meandering and that It was quite likely that if the route were moved away from Jebel Tubeic the number of miles of rough country that the line would cover would be less - in fact the available maps indicated this. Furthermore, Johnson recalled that on April 2 he had flown what was intended to be a great circle route from Cairo to Dhahran in a C-54 under conditions of good visibility. This route probably covered country about 20 to 30 kilometers south of the Trans Jordan border. The flight passed over very rough country with cliffs similar to those shown in Fig. 50, but there appeared to be definite passes through which a road and pipe line could probably be constructed and the mileage of rough country involved seemed to be less. (This impression has since been definitely confirmed by a subsequent reconnaissance flight made by Chandler, which is not properly a part of this report.)