EVOLUTIONS IN AIR.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18367, 28 April 1925, Page 12

EVOLUTIONS IN AIR.

A REMARKABLE DISPLAY. LONDON, April 15. While Mr A. O. H. Fokker, the Dutch aeroplane designer and flyer, was preparing to demonstrate his new safety, slow-flying monoplane at the Croydon iienxlroino to-day attention was directed to an Air Force.machine; which, was hovering, apparently motionless, beneath the clouds.

Tlio experts present were- astonished to see the newcomer, like a drunken sky-rocket, perform every evolution calculated to end in disaster. Ho flew tail down and repeated stajling onlv resulted in the aeroplane slowly sinking horizontally to the ground. Mr F. stated that themachine was fitted'with his now patent "slotted wing," which he proposes shortly to demonstrate in- Atiitrafia.

Mr "Fokker was the first to congratulate- the Air Force- test pilot, Mr Bulman, after which Messrs Fokker an<l Bulman proceeded to take part in a thrilling aerial hovering coutest. Mr Bulman, in a half gale, appeared to drift backwards without losing height. Mr Fokker. carrying eight passengers, stalled his machine at a height of 200 ft., recovered control, ami landed safelv.

Mr Fokker 6tates that in the- nest air war unheard-of engines of destruction will be used. Chief among thein will be steel armoured "super' war 'planes, the size of battleships, and almost as effectively armed, with holds filled with veritable hornets' nests of fighting aeroplanes, which it will be possible to launch and take in in midair, and with tons of bombs and poison gas cylinders. He graphically described a visitation of such machines from a base 1000 miles distant, defying all defences, and havering over a city as long as they liked. Mr Fokker is considering the establishment of an air,service between Holland and Batavia, using large monoplanes.