BRED FOR A ROYAL RACE

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22201, 18 September 1937, Page 19

BRED FOR A ROYAL RACE

In the late summer of each year comes round, the day of the King's Cup air race, the event of the British air year, which reflects in its history the ever-improving speed and stamina of Britain's aircraft. Not many years ago it was flying indeed to travel at 150 miles an hour. Even last year the winning Percival Vega Gull averaged only

164.47 miles an hour; this year the same pilot, Mr Charles Gardner, brought his machine home with a speed record to its credit—he averaged 233.7 miles an hour, highest speed yet for a King's Cup winner. Third man home this year was Mr E. W. Percival. Australian pilotdesigner, who is perhaps the most commanding figure, on performance, in British aviation to-day. He achieved fastest time with an average of 238.7 miles an hour, well above his last year's fastest time of 208.91. It might be said of Percival that when he is not setting records himself he is designing machines for other men's record flights. The Percival aeroplanes—the Gull, the Vega Gull, and the Mew Gull—are famous wherever flight achievement is honoured. Behind the Scenes The King's Cup, of course, is not always to the fleetest; but in recent years the handicappers have left little room for machines of poor speed performance. Time was, as in 1926 and 1927, when the familiar

de Havilland Moth could take the trophy and the prize money at indifferent speeds of 90 miles an hour or thereabouts. And it was not until 1935 that speeds approaching the 200 mark began to be recorded. In that year Flight Lieutenant Tommy Rose, who later made record time from London to the Cape and back, flew to victory the Viscountess Walefield's Miles Falcon, averaging 176.28 miles an hour. How do these things happen? Feats of aviation have ceased to stir the general imagination. There is no more craning of necks: the eyes in the street, as it were, glance upward as the record-breaker passes and then turn back to the pursuits of earth. Jean Batten becomes a popular heroine for a few weeks; but, great pilot as she is, she is only a late product of years of difficult and selfforgetful experiment and research by the men who made her machine and its engine. Pilots zoom into

The Aeroplanes of Edgar Percival

lame. King's Cup and other races trail their individual clouds of glory; but they merely pass on the heritage of the struggling years. Of this nothing could be a better illustration than the career and achievement of E. W. Percival. An Australian Pioneer Percival can fairly be numbered among the pioneers of aviation. Although it is only comparatively recently that his aircraft have become famous, the labours whicn have culminated in the graceful Gulls began in Australia before the Great War. And that, of course, was not very long after the Wright brothers made their first flight. As a boy of 15 or 16, Edgar Percival ieiped a venturesome Australian to ij-iild a home-made aeroplane which actually flew. Near his birthplace, Richmond, not far from Sydney, was the Defence Department's aerodrome, which may have been the first stimulus to his inventive imagination. And not far away, little more than 20 years after ms boyish exploits, machines of his dasign have slid from the sky over Mascot Aerodrome, making and remaking records for the EnglandAustralia flight. In those early years Percival helped to build a queer flying montrosity which put up the remark; able performance of beating the Richmond train over a straight stretch of five miles. W. Hart, with whom Percival worked on this dangerous venture, sat in his aeroplane on a box on two struts, looking through his legs at the ground as the ground slipped past, rather too close for comfort. It was in this machine that Percival received his first training in the air. Even when Sir Charles KingsfordSmith set a new record for the England-Australia flight, in a Percival Gull, the great designer was almost unknown in parts of Australia. Australia, in fact, did not treat him very well at any time. When he returned home after service as a pilot in the Great War, he found that aviation was considered as far beyond the abilities of a mere "local boy." He was forced, after some experimenting with gliders, to make a living by aeronautical barnstorming—like Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, he toured the country towns selling joy-rides. Years of Achievement Hopping from country town to country town, however, gave Percival no opportunity to spread his other wings, the wings of his inventive mind. He had already built gliders to his own design; and he turned the experience gained in this field to the designing of his own aeroplanes, which he flew in competitions. But Australia was not ready to honour its prophet of the air, and Percival saw that the recognition he sought was waiting, if anywhere, overseas. Back to England he went, this time to practise the arts of peace in the air. This was in 1928, when England was requiring the best brains to exploit the rapidly unfolding potentialities of flight. For

a time Percival occupied himself with competition flying; but before long designing became his chief care, the fruit of which was the famous Gull. The years 1935 and 1936 were packed with achievements by this machine. In June, 1935, the designer himself flew a Gull from England to North Africa and back; in November of the same year H. F. Broadbent flew from England to Australia in seven days; Jean Batten's two great flights, England to South America and England to New Zealand, in November, 1935, and October, 1936, further proved the quality of the Gull. In May, 1936, Mrs Mollison flew from England to the Cape and back. The Portsmouth-Johannes-burg race of 1936 was won, in a Vega Gull this time, by C. W. A. Scott and Giles Guthrie. Edgar Percival must smile when he thinks of the "crate" which beat the Richmond train,