NOT RECORD BENT

Evening Post, Volume CCXV, Issue 13, 17 January 1938, Page 7

NOT RECORD BENT

MISS JEAN BATTEN

MOLUSON AN ASPIRANT

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, December 22.

In an interview today, Miss Jean Batten emphatically denied her intention of attempting to break Scott and Black's England-Australia record early next year. "I cannot understand the rumour, and there is absolutely no truth in it," she said. "I have no plans, for flights in the immediate future."

Miss Batten lias recovered from her recent severe chill. She has been obliged, however, to cancel most of her engagements, and intends taking a quiet holiday in the country to recuperate after the strain of the last few weeks. She was to have spent Christmas with Viscount and Viscountess- Bledisloe at their home in Gloucestershire, but this ■ invitaition also had to be declined, most regretfully.

It is Miss- Batten's intention to make a trip to the Continent in January, in the course of which she will visit friends in. Paris. Meanwhile, Mr. J. Mollison has announced his intention of ..attacking both Miss Batten's solo record and Scott and Black's two-pilot record from England to Australia .on a" flight which he declares will be his last. .■;He.intends to leave shortly after Christmas in , the clipped-wing Mew Gull that won the King's Cup air race this year. . ' .. •.

His plan is to save 1500 miles by flying over the Great Circle course, with a first stop at Moscow, second "at Irkutsk, third at Hanoi, in French Irido-China, and last stop at Darwin. The machine has a cruising .speed of 220 miles an hour, and has been fitted with tanks to give it a range of 2000 miles.

Mr. -Mollison has named it Southern Cloud. "When I was an airline pilot in Australia there was a machine called Southern Cloud," he explained. "It took off with my co-pilot and a load of passengers. It was never seen again. My Southern Cloud might redeem the name. I hope it will. I have no real certainty, of ever being seen again once I have taken off. In any case, this' will -.foe my last flight, whichever way, it ends."