TRINS-ATLANTIC AIR SCHEME.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 200, 24 August 1926, Page 5

TRINS-ATLANTIC AIR SCHEME.

HOTELS IS MID-OCEAN/

SEADROMES THE BIG FEATURE.

iFrom Our Own Correspondent)

SAX FRANCISCO, July 20.

A trans-Atlantic air line between Atlantic City, in New Jersey, and Plymouth, in England, eight 100-acre floating and anchored landing fields fitted with sumptuous hotels in mid-ocean, a fleet of super-planes that would carry 25 passengers in addition to baggage, a series of powerful acetylene searchlights that would blaze a trail of light across the Atlantic, comprised in outline a 30----faour voyage from America to England, as conceived by Howard R. Armstrong, of Philadelphia, chief of the experimental mechanical department of the E. L Dupont de Nemoure Company of Wilmington, Delaware.

Working models have been inspected by Army and Naval officials, together with representatives of large shipbuilding concerns and experts in the field of commercial aviation, all of whom visited the engineer's country estate and witnessed a successful demonstration.

Mr. Armstrong displayed a model of the proposed seadromes and a model of the s*. Majestic on a large pool A blowing apparatus made the waves on the pool the same, in ratio, as ocean waves.

Naval men believe tha plan feasible, Mr. Armstrong said. The seadromes, the big feature in the proposed project, would be anchored, and, he claims, entirely free from the pitch to which the greatest liners are subject. The ocean landing fields would cover approximately 111 acres, having a. displacement of many thousand tons, 97 per cent of which would be below the line of wave disturbances. They would contain hotels, fuel, storage tanks, food, machine shops, and meteorological bureaux.