RlOO UNSUITABLE,

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 182, 4 August 1930, Page 7

RIOO UNSUITABLE,

ATLANTIC SERVICE.

Larger and Faster Craft Needed

For Ocean Route.

DIRIGIBLE OF WRONG DESIGN.

(British Official Wireless.),

(Beceived 12 noon.) RUGBY, August 3.

The airship RIOO, which is noAV swinging at her mooring-mast at Montreal underwent an examination yesterday, and the Air Ministry states that it has revealed no structural defect or failure. There is a stripping in the fabric, however, over a fairly extensive area on the underside of the horizontal fin. The materials for repair are on hand. It is probable that no extensive flights will be undertaken in Canada. In any case the flight over Ottawa scheduled for August 5 must be postponed. The officers and crew of the- airship were being officially welcomed in Montreal yesterday. They received scores of telegrams and messages of congratulation.

Wing-Commander deprecates any exaggerated significance being attached to the voyage. It has, in his view, demonstrated the efficiency of the thick-bodied, blunt-nosed type of airship, but all her officers are agreed that the vessel does not conform to the requirements for an adequate and regular trans-Atlantic service.

Sir Dennistoun Burncy, at whose airship" works the vessel was built, is of the opinion that a ship twice as large as the RIOO, and capable of doing 85 miles an hour, is necessary for such a service.

Air Minister's Message. "The RIOO's arrival at the mooring mast in Canada built for airships, which are still in the experimental stage, will go. far to justify your confidence in British engineering skill and enterprise," writes Lord Thomson in a letter which the RIOO carried to tho Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. R. B. Bennett, thanking him for Canada's co-operation in the great experiment, fraught, as it was, with precious possibilities for the British commonwealth of nations.

He adds: "If tho experimental programme of which the flight to Montreal is one of tho most important features fulfils all expectations, larger and swifter vessels will be built. Then all the great cities will require a mooring mast for leviathans crossing the Atlantic. The adventurous spirit made Britons predominant on tho seas, and they only need encouragement to secure a iike advantage in the air."