GIANT FLYING-BOATS

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 128, 24 February 1938, Page 11

GIANT FLYING-BOATS

To Link Britain With

Dominions

“Dominion" Special Service—Uy Air Mail, • London, February 5The man who designed tlie Atlantic flying-boats Caledonia pud Cumbria, is planning to build still bigger ami belter planes. Australia, New- Zealand ami South Africa, will be brought closer to the Mother Country, and to each other as a result of the genius of Arthur Gouge. Discussing further developments in Empire flying, he said this week: “In time flying-boats will be large enough to deal with 250 passengers. In fact, there need be no limit to their size." Arthur Gouge has risen from obscurity to be the world’s leading designer of marine aircraft. He began his career at 13, when he left school to become a carpenter's apprentice, To-day at 47, he is chief designer and general manager at Short Brothers (Rochester and Bedford) Limited, the flying-boat builders. Of his own career, Mr. Gouge said: “When I was a boy my father, a Methodist lay preacher, had to drive me to school, I did not care for school, and I was glad to be apprenticed as a carpenter to a firm of builders,' Then I began to have a desire for learning. I studied engineering and mathematics at night school, and eventually took my B.Sc., degree." Starting as nn ordinary hand in the carpentry section of Short Brothers, young Gouge was quickly spotted for his ability. In 1920 he worked with Mr. Oswald Short, chairman of the firm in making the first all-metal aeroplane hi Great Britain. He was appointed a director in 1928, general manager In 1932. Rochester, which made him a freeman last year, has reason to be grateful to the ope-thne carpenter’s boy, for thanks to Shorts it is one of the most prosperous towns in the country.