NEW ENGLAND TO CAPE FLYING RECORD

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 117, 11 February 1936, Page 9

NEW ENGLAND TO CAPE FLYING RECORD

Mrs. Mollison’s Time Beaten

ROSE SUCCEEDS DESPITE DIFFICULTIES

By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. (Received February 10, 5.5 p.m.)

Cape Town, February 9. Flight-Lieutenant T. Rose arrived just after 6 p.m. London time, beating Mrs. Amy Mollison’s record by 13 hours 15 minutes.

Rose left Lympne at 12.25 a.m. G.M.T. on Thursday, flying the Miles Falcon monoplane in which he won the King’s Cup last year. Just as he landed at Almaza Aerodrome, Cairo, on Thursday evening his engine cut out, his petrol supply being exhausted. On the way from Cairo to Khartoum, which he reached at noon on Friday, be was forced down 50 miles south of Haifa, and lost some time before taking off again. He reached Kisumu (Kenya) at 8.5 (local time) bn Saturday morning. The official timings of the flight show that he arrived at 6.3 p.m., the flight having occupied 3 days 17 hours 38 minutes. Mrs. Mollison took 4 days, 6 hours, 53 minutes. In addition to breaking Mrs. Amy Mollison’s record, Rose beat by Bmin. the French record from Le Bourget to Cape Town, established by Goulette and Salel.

Rose damaged a wheel guard when he made a forced landing in a field 70 miles south of Salisbury, where he spent the night at a farmhouse. His longest previous stop was for five hours at Cairo. The aerodrome staff at Salisbury repaired the damage while the machine was being refuelled. His arrival there allayed anxiety as he was many hours overdue, having missed Salisbury in a rainstorm. Rose says that the journey was uneventful, but that the latter stages were bumpy, resulting in his injuring an elbow against a petrol gauge. He was lucky at Cairo when he landed with only a few drops of petrol. The “Daily Mail’s Cape Town correspondent says that Rose stated he had had a grand time, despite the shocking conditions after the first day. when he reached Cairo in 14 hours, which he believed to be a record for any type of machine. He would have arrived on Saturday if he had not suffered bad weather and ill-luck, including petrol leakage In the Sudan, due to loosening a pipe when he pushed in his kit too forcibly. He had only 2} hours sleep throughout, although he did not use special pills to prevent somnolence.