TRANSPACIFIC

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 167, 17 July 1941, Page 10

TRANSPACIFIC

FERRYING PLANES CAPT. BRAIN'S PREDICTION (0.C.) SYDNEY, July 11. The statement that the time is not. far distant when passenger-carrying air liners will cross the Pacific Ocean in 48 hours was made by Captain 1.. .1. Brain, operations manager of Qantas Empire Airways, who recently piloted a Catalina flying boat, from America to Australia in four days seven hours, thus beating the record established by tile late Sir Kingsford Smith and C. T. I :m in 1928. As already reported in the "Auckland Star," a regular ferry service has now been established to fly planes for the Royal Australian Air Force from America to Australia.

Captain Brain sa'.i a IS-hour trip was no flight, of fancy. "If," he said, "we can span the Pacific in a few days by daylight hops under existing conditions, it requires no great, stretch of imagination to see the same journey being accomplished in two and a half or two days by adopting night flying."

Captain Brain referred to the new speed record for the Pacific crossing from San Diego to Australia. "I do not regard that so-called record flight an achievement of any great magnitude." he said. "We were not travelling particularly fast, nor did we fly at night. It is significant only in the sense that it points the way to the kind of ocean travel wo may expect when the war is over.

"When that time comes, and regular commercial airlines arc established between Australia and the American continent, we can confidently expect the journey to be accomplished in 48 hours. Even under present standards of longdistance air travel that would still be an attractive and comfortable journey.

Improving Technique ''Apart from the obvious wartime value of these transocean flights, the Pacific ferry performed an especially useful function by developing and improving our technique of longrange ocean flying. It particularly created interest in the development of short-wave radio direction finding as a basis of transocean navigation, and so paves tlie way for the longrange ocean airways of the future."

Captain Brain described the Catalinas as "very fine machines to handle and possessing no vices." They were an extremely modern type of aircraft in regular service with the United States Navy. In type they resembled the Cuba flying-boat, in which Captain P. G. Taylor made his historic air survey of the Indian Ocean shortly before the outbreak of war.

Captain Brain said it would be invidious to compare the Pacific with the Atlantic air ferry. The air journey across the Pacific was twice the distance that had to be covered in the Atlantic, but, on the other hand, pilots ferrying American bombers over the Atlantic frequently encountered extremely cold weather, bringing ice conditions in its train, and as they approached the coasts of Great Britain they never knew when they might be met by enemy aircraft