OCEAN FLIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 156, 30 December 1944, Page 9

OCEAN FLIGHT

CEYLON TO AUSTRALIA

PASSINGER SERVICE ! By travelling- non-stop from Ceylon toitg base in jy^Jern Ajjs^rftjisi in 17i hours? a. Libejrajor of. Qantas Empire Airways has broken itie record for the Indian Ocean civil service. ... * The.story pi. the flight is ..told, in the Melbourne "Herald" in a message from Perth:-. t ~ , , , ...... The distance was 3600 statute miles, covered at an average of more than 200 miles ah hour. ... ■, The chigf ,j>ilQt. was Captain Frank Thomas, > arid the 14, passengers included Sir, Ronald Cross, British, High Commissioner to Australia, who had been on a visit to England, and on his return journey went to jthe North Burma arid Central Burma fronts. He stayed with Admiral Lord Louis Mountbattep, Suprenae . Allied Cpmniarider, South-east Asia, at his headquarters in .-Kahdy,' .Ceylon, .and also with Lieut-General Sir Wijliajn Slim, commanding tlie British and Imperial 14th Army at his . headquarters in Bengal. TAKEOFF IN CEYLON. "There is rib runway near Colombo long enough to get a fully-loaded Liberator safely off. So we took off from there with 1000 gallons of petrol and flew to a long R.A.F. runway elsewhere in the island," states the writer, Geoffrey Tebbutt. "There the fuelload was increased to 2900 gallons— i about a 60 years' ration for a large car—while passengers and creV had j lunch. Their next meal ashore was Ito be breakfast in Western Australia. "I suppose the Indian Ocean service of Qantas will lose its present importance when Java, Malaya, and Burma are recovered and the normal route to India and Europe is reopened. | But in the meantime its value as a quick link with Ceylon and India goes on increasing, and as the British Secretary of State .for Air recently announced in the House of Commons, it is hoped.-to raise the frequency of the service from the present five trips a fortnight by Catalinas.and Liberators. "I understand that it is hoped to secure Lancasters, and that the Catalinas whose payload over the vast distance involving no possible stopping place is very small, will gradually be laid off the service. TRIUMPH OF NAVIGATION. | "This run is a triumph of navigation. The Qantas machines are obliged jto maintain radio silence'"and to find their way by astro navigation and dead] reckoning-'with the best meteoi'ological advice to be had on the very limited available data. .■ , "We have with us on this trip Squadron Leader John Hogan, R.A.A.F., of j Perth, who is described as the wizard of Indian Ocean meteorology, and! whose calculations play an important part in deciding the exact course to be taken over the world's longest regular civil aviation non-stop route. He had been in Ceylon for a consultation with the weather experts at that end on the ssytem,of zones into which the weather information is divided. "The'principle is that if the calculations show that a Catalina is likely to have to fly for more than 30 hours between Ceylon and Western Australia it does not start, for that would be cutting the safety margin rather fine. "There is a case, however, of a Catalina having been 31 hours 51 minutes on the journey. It was flown by Captain W. H. Crowther. manager of western operations for Qantas, and it encountered head winds, almost throughout. He also was a passeri&er to Australia on the Liberator's record trip."