Santa Claus’ 80 Aeroplanes

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 72, 17 December 1938, Page 11 (Supplement)

Santa Claus’ 80 Aeroplanes

How Your Gifts Will Arrive This Year

TpATHER CHRISTMAS is Using a whole fleet of aeroplanes this year to carry his cards and toys to Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. They are not his own aeroplanes, of course, because bis home, after all, is not a very big place, and where could be keep SO aeroplanes till the year round? He couldn’t possibly do it.

Most of Ids toys eome from England, and bis sleigh isn’t quite big enough, you know, to hold the millions of letters and cards and 'parcels that are going out to the Empire this Christmas. So Father Christmas thought perhaps he had better get some help, and one day he called at an airways office in London’and asked them to lend him their fleet. You would think that the airways, with thousands of passengers and tons of mail and. freight to carry to Dodoma and Koh Satnui. Kisumu, and Waikato, and hundreds of other places all over the world, would lie too busy to do all this extra work for Father Christmas. But not a bit of it. Everybody has to make a sjieeial effort of some kind at Christmastime, and this is the airways’ special contribution to t|ie peace on earth ami goodwill among the nations, that we all think so much about at Christinas. Then, too. they have the men and they have the ships—a great fleet of snips and a tine body of men, hundreds of captains and hundreds of ships. Ships of tlie air, mind you, that travel hundreds of miles an hour, thousands of feet above the earth, where they do not get in anybody’s way, and there is nothing to stop them going as fast as they like ami wherever they want to. The airways people, 100, are so good at geography that they know where everywhere is and bow to get there. Their flying-boats, for instance, start at Southampton and, even with his eyes shut, the captain can find his way to Durban, or even to Australia, which is simply thousands of miles away, without ever getting lost and without ever looking at a signpost, although there is a signpost at Karachi, in India, which they could look at if they wanted to. '

From Croydon other aeroplanes—not flying-boats, because they do not live when they are not flying on the water—but landplanes, because they can stand up on the ground—go to Paris, which is in France, and Zurich, which is in Switzerland, and other far-off places in all sorts of foreign countries, .just as flying-boats do, only when they eome down they come down on’Ihe land instead of ou the water. They never lose their way, because they have instruments and things in the aeroplane that show them how lo get Io wherever they are going, -and whether they are going the right or the wrong way. The instruments show them when to turn to the left and when to turn to the right. And they even have an instrument that will guide the aeroplane by itself if the captain wants to look at his map or work out. bis position by the stars.

These aeroplanes, instead of having four reindeer to pull them through the air. have four engines each, and each engine is stronger than 200 reindeer and 200 times as fast. ’ ’•■

When the aeroplanes arrive at Nairobi or Durban, or Raj Saniand. or wherever they happen to be going to. Father Christinas goes down to the airport and meets them himself. Then he has the letters and parcels for the district transferred to Ids sleigh, whips up his reindeer, and away he goes ami delivers the presents in person. The aeroplanes are a great help to him, too. For instance, if a boy in Durban who has been bad for a week suddenly starts being good, Father Christmas has to get him a present in a hurry. So he gets into a little red telephone booth and calls up London, and says: •'Send me an electric train or a set of draughts or a big red apple,” or whatever the case may be, and the airways put it on their next aeroplane and Father Christmas gets it in time

1 expect be will dp it this way.jevery year now. Next year, though, lie will probably have a bigger fleet, because the airways, who are entitled Io a Christmas present as much tis anybody else, have asked Jiim for some new airliners and flying-boats, and he has promised to let them have them as a reward for carrying his mails for him.

The arrangement is working so well that a very rich gentleman in England who owns the Post Office has decided to ask the airways to, carry letters and parcels in their tieroplanes all the year round, and the airways people, who are very helpful, have agreed to do so.