SPEED IN THE AIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 235, 3 October 1936, Page 8

SPEED IN THE AIR.

"If the man who sailed the first dug-out canoe could live again," said Colonel Charles Lindbergh recently, "lie would hardly see more change in ships than our generation has seen in aircraft. . . . Scientists now talk of time in terms of astronomy, physiology and psychology. Our concepts of time are changing, and I think it is nowhere more noticeable than in aviation. Our ideas of time and distance are entirely different from those which our fathers held." In this remote part of the world—but the meaning of "remote" has changed, too —ideas of time and distance were changed, overnight, when Kingsford Smith flew across t]ie Tasman —it is not yet eight years ago—in 14i hours. They were changed again, even more abruptly, when Mr. C. W. A. Scott flew from London to Melbourne in 2 days 23 hours. That flight was made less than two years ago, but even in that time the developments in aviation have been so great that the ordinary man's ideas are again out of date.

Competition in the race from Portsmouth to Johannesburg was confined to British 'planes, and none of the 'planes which participated had been specially designed for the contest. All left London about 6.30 a.m. on Tuesday, and the leader, Captain Halse, was in Belgrade at 12.8 p.m., in Cairo at 7-10 p.m., in Khartoum in another six hours, and in Kenya 24 hours and 23 minutes after leaving Portsmouth. Before he was compelled to withdraw from the race he had flown 5450 miles in 32 hours' flying time, at an average speed of 170 miles per hour. That is to say, he had flown across Europe and the Mediterranean and more than half the length of the huge continent of Africa between dawn on one day and dusk on the next.

Such a speed is remarkable only because it was sustained for thousands of miles. As air speed is reckoned now, it was slow. Two of the new "fighter" 'planes seen at the annual display of the Royal Air Force some months ago were reported to have speeds of more than 300 miles an hour, and the speed of an even later model is greater still —how much greater has not been revealed. It is difficult to think in terms of 300 miles an hour—five miles a minute —but if that speed could be maintained a 'plane might fly the Tasman in four hours, and reach Invercargill, from Auckland in less than three. Yet, not three years ago, the late Mr. C. T. P. Ulm, in a 'plane then fairly modern, caused astonishment by flying from Auckland to Invercargill in eight hours.

It is "a 'melancholy thought that these recent developments in aviation, which have gone so far ahead of the ordinary man's conceptions, have been prompted and quickened by the neecjs of the nations in their preparation for war, and that, consequently, the achievements of the men who make the aeroplanes and the men who fly them should inspire distrust and dread as much as admiration and delight. It was such a thought which impelled Colonel Lindbergh, usually reticcnt, to speak so plainly at a luncheon tendered him in Berlin by the German Air Ministry. "We have lived," he said, "to see our harmless wings of fabric turn into carriers of destruction even more dangerous than battleships and guns. We have lived to carry on our shoulders the responsibility for the result of our experiments, for while we have been drawing the world closer together in peace we have stripped the arcnour of every nation in Avar. . . . When I see that within a day or two damage can be done which no time can ever replace, I begin to realise we must look for a new type of security—security which is dynamic, not static, security which rests in intelligence, not in forts."