ONLY A TOY FLEET!

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 188, 11 August 1925, Page 10

ONLY A TOY FLEET!

WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE FROM THE AIR.

V DAY OF 'PLANES

"We have been misled,' , said a writer in the Sydney "Telegraph," describing the arrival of the Fleet in Sydney. The American warships are not giants. Not even big boats. Not even as big as ferry steamers. They are only tiny, drabcoloured toys. You could push them over with one foot. And for that matter, too. South H6ad lighthouse is only a squat doll's house. And Sydney's cars are merely flat-backed ants; Sydney's people are but multicoloured blobs, surmounted by pink dots. And as Mark Twain said of the story of his death, the report of yesterday's heavy seas was "greatly exaggerated." The Pacific was merely an expanse of mottled green, fringed along its land edge with a flurry of foamy lace. The roar of welcome was another exaggeration. Sydney was silent. We —our seaplane—made the only noise. Certainly it was enough for five fleet welcomes. The Fleet, Sydney, its lighthouse, its people, its cars, all looked so tiny from above. But with a strong wind roaring across the heavens, and "air pockets" and currents lying around every aerial corner; with evil-smelling and worse, tasting oil spraying one from the exhaust, and an Arctic bite in the air, Mother Earth took on a new interest. Fleet Has a " Tail." We were the first up aloft. A few minutes after taxi-ing down the harbour, we were over the Fleet; minutes mean miles to a Fairey seaplane. Then we dived, and climbed, and circled, and side-slipped, and banked, in the approved " welcoming " way. Unlike the last English eleven, the Fleet had a " tail." It was formed by the hospital ship—immaculate white, she looked from the heavens—and the supply ship. Ahead, the battleships kept perfect alignment. But the "tail " waggled; its "joints" could not or would not follow their leader. Soon we lost our splendid isolation. An arrow head sped overland. Over Sydney it resolved itself into three aeroplanes—light bombers from Richmond Air Base. Then the Savoia, like a winged dolphin, flashed over the Fleet. Came several civil machines, and at last the launching of seaplanes from the battleships. Catapulted Aloft. Thaf happened when the vanguard of the Fleet was in the, vicinity of the Heads. It looked a very simple matter. Most of the warships carried one or more seaplanes. They were set on narrow criss-crossed platforms —a naval adaptation, as it were, ofv the saying that " big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bit 'cm." A little group of seamen gathered round the seaplanes, dispersed, and then the machines shot forth from the cata-' pults at a speed of sixty miles an hour, and the seaplanes were in the air. They stood not on the order of their going, but went. Fine flyers, these Americans. Once iiloft they emulated the example of the welcoming aircraft, and " stunted." Their machines were speedy, and they soon made themselves at home in the Australian air.