AVIATION NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 87, 9 October 1935, Page 13

AVIATION NEWS

'ALL BED" EOUTE'

THE FUTURE OF GIBRALTAR

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, September 14.

I The, journey of the three Short fourengined. flying, boats, non-stop from England'to Gibraltar in just over il hours, has special significance. 'It shows that the technique of British flying boat design has reached a point where the longest sections of - journey to the East along an "all-red" route, with, halts only at points under British control, can be flown without intermediate alighting. The importance of'this factor in emergency that thight.forbid the.use .of foreign territory to.British aircraft, is plain: The next step in the development of Empire air. strategy will be the planningl !of a system whereby British units in :Jhe East will be reinforced solely through a chain of British-controlled [stations. '-

Nor should the commercial possibili-ties-of such a route escape attention. A flying-boat route to the East ,by way,,of Gibraltar and Malta would be less than 500 miles longer than the route at present followed by Imperial Airways. Moreover, there are obvious advantages of: a flying boat service, radiating from Gibraltar in the development of African air services. Little -imagination is. needed to see Gibraltar as a future great .aerial station, the junction for routes going east to Egypt, India, Australia, China, and Japan, west across Jthe Atlantic Ocean'to the Americas, north to England and north-western Europe, and south to West Africa and Cape Town. KING'S CUP RACE. The fourteenth race for the, King's Cup, held on two days last week, was notable in the performance of Mr. E. W. Percival, who flew the. course on the final day at an average speed of 208.91 m.p.h. and the unsuspected speed of the winning Gipsy-Six-powered Falcon cabin monoplane, which deceived the handicappers to the extent of 20 miles an hour and finished some seventeen miles ahead of its nearest rival. • In four successive laps of the seven that were flown on the" final day Mr. Percival's Mew Gull monoplane, which had been entered by \the Duke of Kent, maintained a steady speed of 211 m.p.h. No machine has exceeded 200 m.p.h. in the previous history of the King's Cup, and the pilot' deserv-ed-better than the sixth place to which his handicap reduced him. ' The first day's racing was an eliminating' contest over a course of 957 miles, which took the flyers from London north to Edinburgh and Renfrew, and back along the west coast by. way of Newtownards (Ulster), Blackpooland Cardiff. Of the 29 competitors who started, 22 completed this course. Twenty of them qualified for the final, which consisted' of seven circuits of a 50-miles lap with starting and finishing points at the Hatfield aerodrome. The Mew Gull which set a new speed record for the event is the machine that won the Grand Prix of the Aero Club de France in the hands of Mr. Guy de. Chateaubrun last month. It is a single-seat cabin craft with fixed undercarriage, designed for fast touring and postal transport, and derives power from a Gipsy-Six 200 h.p engine.