SURVEY PLANNED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 74, 29 March 1939, Page 13

SURVEY PLANNED

ALTERNATIVE ROUTE

AUSTRALIA-BRITAIN BY AIR

SOUTH INDIAN OCEAN

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Received March 29, noon.)

CANBERRA This Day,

A survey flight across the Indian Ocean from Onslow, on the northwest coast of Australia, to Mombasa, on the east coast of South Africa, is being sponsored by the Commonwealth Government. It is to begin in June and will be made via Cocos Island, Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Islands, and Port Victoria, Mahe Island, in the Seychelles Group. » In making this announcement tonight, the Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr. H. V. C. Thorby, said that the flight was designed to ascertain the defence and civil aviation value of this route as an alternative to the present air route to England in the event of an emergency. The Government, he added, has chartered from Dr. Richard Archbold, research associate of the American Museum of Natural History, the longrange flying-boat Guba, and Captain P. G. Taylor, the prominent Australian aviator, will have charge of the entire flight and the preparations for it.