AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 5, 6 July 1910, Page 7

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

RHEIMS AVIATION WEEK. EIGHT ACCIDENTS.

By Telegraph.— Press Association. — Copyright. PARIS, sth July. There was a great attendance at the Rheims aviation meeting. The weather for the opening waa gusty, with rain, but was afterwards calm. At one stage there were twenty aviators flying simultaneoubly. Eight accidents occurred, and three aeroplanes were smashed, M. Martinet being badly injured. The aeronautical experts are discussing Herr Machtor's fatal fall of yesterday, and they insist on the danger of aeroplaning in a strong wind. This possesses a peculiar fascination for most aviators, but overstrains the frames of the machines. THE ZEPPELIN VII. DISASTER. LESSON OF THE ACCIDENT. "BERLIN, sth July. Count Zeppelin states that the disaster to his latest dirigible airship, Zeppelin the Seventh, was due to its being caught in an upright whirlwind. This lifted it to a great height, as previously described, and caused the subsequent fall. The lesson of the accident, Count Zeppelin says, is not the building of a different type of airship, but the ob- j servatiqn of the weather so as to avoid I such winds as that which destroyed his ; airship. It was as necessary for aero- j nauts as for shipmasters to foresee and, avoid typhoons. M. DE LESSEPS. A FEAT ItFcANADA. MONTREAL, sth July. M. de Lesseps, the French aviator, who recently flew from Calais to Dover,^ has performed another feat here. At a height of 2000 feet he circled round the city, covering, a distance of 30 miles in 49 minutes. M. DE LESSEPS AS AN AIRMAN. The cross-Channel llight by M. Jacques de Lesseps entitled him to the £100 cup oifered by the Daily Mail for the second airman who should achieve the feat, and also to the prize of £6uo offered by the firm of MM. Ruinart and Son, the champagne growers, to the first airman who, after giving ten days' notice of his intention, should cross the Channel on a Saturday or Sunday during the present year. M. Jacques de Lesseps, who is the 11th child and youngest son of the late Baron Ferdinand de Lesseps, of Suez Canal fame, was born in 1883. He is not only an amateur but a comparative novice as an airman, since his first flights date only from the end of last year. He has seven good cross-country voyages to his credit, and has shown that he is of the stuff of which great airmen are made. His monoplane was in all material respects similar to that which was used by M. Bleriot on the occasion of his pioneer cross-Channel flight last July. According to the French press, M. de Lesseps crossed in 30 minutes, as compared with M. Bleriot's 31 minutes' flight.