NEARING AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 102, 24 January 1930, Page 11

NEARING AUSTRALIA

CHICHESTER’S GREAT FLIGHT SOURABAYA LEFT EXPECTED AT DARWIN TO-DAY (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright) (Rec. January 23, 9.5 p.m.). Sydney, January 23. Advice has been received in Sydney that Mr. Chichester, the New Zealand airman, who left Sourabaya at 6 o’clock this morning for Atamboea, expects to reach Darwin to-morrow. His itinerary thereafter includes Cloncurry and Charleville. [An earlier message from Wellevreden stated that Mr. Chichester, who had left there for Rampang, in the Island of Lombok, when three hours from Batavia landed at Tagal, owing to bad weather.] ARRIVAL AT BIMA (Rec. January 23, 11.10 p.m.) VVeltevreden, January 23. Mr. Chichester has arrived at Bima. A GREAT EFFORT Now nearing the shores of Australia, Mr. F. C. Chichester has put up a remarkable performance. With comparatively little experience as a pilot, he embarked upon a flying tour of Europe as a prelude to the exploit in which he is at present engaged. ’A forced landing in a corner of Rumania on this trip provided its greatest and. probably most unpleasant feature of the tour. Immediately after the landing he was arrested as a Bolshevik spy,, afterwards being informed that he would be shot. Nobody there had heard of New Zealand, and Mr. Chichester must have been very near to being placed against a wall. While in' England Mr. Chichester took every available opportunity to gain experience, always having the England-Aus-tralia project in mind. Yesterday morning Mr. G. D. M. Goodwin, his partner in the Goodwin-Chiches-ter Aviation Company, received a letter from Air. Chichester recounting some of his experiences in England. He rose at 2 a.m. daily and was in the air by 2.30. On one occasion he encountered a 60 mile an hour gale, and took an hour and ten minutes to fly the twenty miles between Brooklands and Stag Lane. A gust as he turned into the wind turned his machine upside down, and when he landed six men hung on to the wings, but they could not keep it down. The letter is dated December 12, eight days before Mr. Chichester: took off for Lyons on his first hop. AAt that date he had been flying'four months, and in that time had spent 160 hours in the air. In preparation for the. great journey Mr. Chichester had drawn up a set of maps which when unrolled measured more than 71 feet in length. A total of 1300 gallons of petrol was laid down for him along the route/by the Shell Company. Leaving London at 3 o’clock on the morning of December 20, Mr..Chichester set his course for Lyons, arriving there at 10.22 a.m. After refueling he left again at 12.10, the next port of call being Catania, which is situated on the Gulf of Catania, in Sicily. From there he crossed the Mediterranean Sea and arrived in Tripoli on December 22. A forced landing in the mdrshes there was necessitated by a fog, which prevented him from seeing the adjacent beacons. When taking off again he broke the propeller and also one of the struts between the planes. Not being willing to abandon the flight, Mr. Chichester decided to await} the arrival of the new parts. This kept him there for 18 days, and after fitting the replacements he left Tripoli on the morning of January 9 for Bengazi, Egypt, from whence he went on to Chabar. His journey across India occupied two days, as against the five days taken by Sir Alan Cobham. From Chabar, which is in Persia and on the Arabian Sea, he went to Karachi, Jhansi, Calcutta and Rangoon. This journey, across seven hundred miles of the most difficult portion of India, took him 6} hours, which is regarded as a record for a light aeroplane under such conditions. From Rangoon he dropped down the Malay Peninsula to Singapore, breaking the journey at Victoria Point, which is a little less than halfway from Rangoon. Leaving Singapore on Monday last, he hopped down the archipelago to Java, and from thence started for Timor, from which he will make the final jump over 020 miles of ocean to the mainland of Australia. Unlikely to Fly Tasman. Speaking to a “Dominion” representative yesterday afternoon, Air. Goodwin stated that he thought that statements that Mr. Chichester would fly to New Zealand were incorrect. “Chichester is not a fool,” he said, “though he is very determined and he would try if he considered that he had a reasonable chance of success.” Mr.. Goodwin added that he did not see how Mr. Chichester could do the 1200 odd miles in a light ’plane such as the one he was flying, while the chance of having good weather for the whole trip ren-, dered the chances still more remote.