DESERT FLYING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 229, 27 September 1941, Page 8

DESERT FLYING

15,000 MILES N.Z. SERGEANT'S RECORD (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service) CAIRO. September 6. Fifteen thousand miles of desert flying in three months. That is the record of a sergeant of the N.Z.E.F. in the Middle East who has been piloting a reconnaissance plane working in co-ordination with the army's desert patrols. With considerable New Zealand flying experience to his credit, the sergeant, who before the war was a well-known citizen of Timaru, arrived from the Dominion as a private in an infantry battalion. He had, of course, never flown in desert conditions before, but becoming acclimatised has not taken him long. Cruising over the vast and monotonous expanse of three great deserts, he has landed on places where hitherto no white man had ever been. Often he has been the guest of lonely desert tribes at unfrequented oases, where dignity and hospitality go hand in hand with squalor and filth With him as navigator is an Englishman, who for years had been mate on tramp steamers'sailing to remote parts of the world, but had never before navigated a plane, far less in desert conditions. He has taken to his new job with remarkable ease Now, he feels as sure of himself in the air as ever he did on the sea and has an uncanny knowledge of the mysterious ways of the desert. Flying a plane in the desert is much more difficult that is generally imagined. There is hardly ever a horizon, nothing but a great, yellow haze The eye-strain alone is considerable, pilots having to wear specially prepared glasses to counteract the glare.