FAST SEAPLANES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 226, 24 September 1927, Page 9

FAST SEAPLANES.

SCHNEIDER CUP RACE. Entrants Making Trials To 1 Test Seaworthiness. RACE TO-MORROW. (British Official Wireless.) (Received 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, September 23. Trials of seaworthiness of Italian and British flying boats which are in competition at Venice for the Schneider Cup are taking place to-day. These involve two take-offs and two landings in the course of 20 miles and then mooring to buoys for six hours in order to test any possible leakages. The race is scheduled to be flown at 2.30 p.m. on Sunday. The course, which is off Lido, is a triangular one, and there will be seven laps, involving 19 turns in all. The British team is as follows: Lieutenant Kinnead, pilot of the Gloster biplane; Flight-Lieutenant Webster, the super-marine aeroplane; and Flightlieutenant Worsley, super-marine. In reserve are Squadron Leader Slater and one Gloster and one super-marine machine. The Italian team is: De Beraardi. Ferrarin and Guazetti. who all pilot "Macchi" machines with Fiat engines. In reserve is Guasconi and one "Macchi." A correspondent of the "Daily Chronicle," says that the Supermarine-Napier j 5.5 ie a monoplane—a development of the Napier 5.4, which won the world's speed record in 1925. It is a tiny blue and silver machine designed by Mr. R. J. Mitchell, chief engineer of the Supermarine Aviation Works, and it has many novel features. Fuel is carried in the starboard float, and the fuselage (or body) is the smallest ever designed. The other machine, the Gloeter-Napier IV., built by the Gloster Aircraft Company, is a midget of a biplane with a sky-blue body and burnished gold wings. Two pilots climbed into the tiny cockpits, which fit them like suits, and there was a mighty roar aa they started the engines up.