R.N. Phantom Sets Record

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31983, 9 May 1969, Page 11

R.N. Phantom Sets Record

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, May 8. A Royal Navy jet made history yesterday by crossing the Atlantic in under five hours taking one of its crew to the lead in the transatlantic air race. The jet, a Royal Navy Phantom. took only four hours 53 minutes and 10 seconds to fly from Floyd Bennet field in New York to Wisley Airport, near London. It beat the previous point-to-point record set on Sunday by another Royal Navy Phantom in the race. The first American-made Phantom did

it in five hours, three minutes and 18 seconds, shattering an 11-year-old record. Yesterday Lieutenant Hugh Drake took the lead in the race going from New York’s Empire State Building to London’s Post Office tower in five hours 19 minutes and 16 seconds.

He beat a passenger on the first Phantom, Lieutenant Paul Waterhouse, who had set the record of just over five and a half hours from tower to tower.

There is one more- Phantom jet in New York. Lieutenant Drake said that given only reasonable weather the third Navy entry ought to do [better than his record-break-ing flight.

Among the other arrivals at the Post Office Tower yesterday was an American, Mr Ben Garcia, who had to come via a scheduled flight after Canadian authorities blocked his bid to fly his own plane over.

He said that had he been allowed to make his own flight, he would have taken a how-to-navigate book along with him.

“Doing is the best way of learning,” he said. The New Zealander in the race, Mr Neil Campbell Stevens, was reported to be waiting in New York for favourable winds before setting out on his mammoth Sight in a 1934 Tiger Moth. In one of the smallest

planes to take part, Mr Stevens, aged 26, whose home is 15 Methuen Road, Avondale, Auckland, plans to fly via Newfoundland, Iceland, Greenland and Scotland to London. It will take him about 70 hours The co-owner of the aircraft, Mr Robin Culpan, said that a mishap on Tuesday with the aircraft was not serious. “A friend of ours who was bringing the plane from Washington, where it had been modified, to New York had an accident on take-off,” he said. “The propeller was ! damaged,”