HINKLER’S FLIGHT

Evening Star, Issue 21012, 28 January 1932, Page 15

HINKLER’S FLIGHT

■ FEAT OF NAVIGATION SHEET FROM AN ATLAS Squadron-leader Hinkler’s plain story of his marvellous 10,000-mile flight from Now York to London by way of the South Atlantic Ocean, told a few hours after his triumphal landing in his “ Puss Moth ” monoplane at Hanworth aerodrome, only heightens tho impression of matchless skill and daring which earlier information had made. He spoke in terse, unemotional sentences of flying " blind ” for six hours over the Atlantic, with only the luminous dials of his compass and turn indicator to help him, of hours spent five feet above the ocean, of tremendous thunderstorms—" the lightning flashes looked as thick_as tree trunks ” —and terrific squalls. His extraordinary powers of navigation, helped by a sort of sixth sense developed in a vast experience of longdistance flying, brought him to tho coast of the African Continent only ten miles from tho landfall he had selected before leaving Port Natal, in Brazil. He flew entirely by compass and dead reckoning, tho yarying shapes and movements of the clouds enabling him in some uncanny way to estimate the extent of drift caused by changes of wind direction. His map was a sheet Torn from an atlas, and the only instruments he used,_ apart from tho compass and the turn indicator, which kept him flying level when all was blackness around him, were clock, air speed indicator, and altimeter. Hinkler stated that his maximum range with tho_ tanks full was twenty-five hours at cruising speed. When lie landed at Bathurst in the Gambia about two hours’ fuel remained in the tanks. NOT FOOLHARDY ATTEMPT.

Though lie depended so utterly on perfect running of hia 120 h.p. “ Gipsy ” motor, Hinkler’s flight escapes the charge of foolhardiness because of the ininuto forward preparations, involving the most exact knowledge of fuel and oil consumption and the perfect conditioning of every detail of machine and engine, and also because of his exceptional qualities. Aircraft designer and builder, inventor, brilliant test pilot and navigator, Hinkler has the rare, perhaps instinctive, ability described in the phrase “ He has a compass in his head.” When every possible allowance is made for knowledge and the precision, of the elementary instruments ho employed for the 2,000 miles dash across the open sea, there remains an inexplicable something which raises Hinkler and a few other pilots right above their fellow-s. To call it genius gives it a name, but does not dispel’ the mystery. Now Hinkler is faced with a long series of dinners, congratulatory meetings, decorations, and so forth. None lias ever deserved them more than the gallant little Queenslander, who, in making the first light aeroplane crossing of the Atlantic, the first west to cast aeroplane flight over the South Atlantic, and the first solo transatlantic flight since Lindbergh’s journey in a much bigger and more powerful machine, has credited the British aircraft and aero engine industry and British politage with one of the greatest achievements in the history of aviation. ALMOST SKIMMING WAVES. The first stage of a trip from New iir '^ ama * ca "’as a test for what Hinkler always calls his “ship.” . -Ge left in the afternoon and arrived • n Ja E aica f° r breakfast next morning. Thence he went by stages round the coast of South America to Natal, m the north of Brazil, where he was much struck by the plumage of the birds he disturbed. When I arrived there on November -4, he says, “ I had only one day left before the end of the full moon to continue my journey. So I started across the Atlantic next morning. For the first 1 00 miles w T e were never more tfian oft above the surface of the ocean, because the south-easterly trade winds were blowing strong, and it did not seem wise to rise.” IN MIDST OF LIGHTNING. Nearly midway between America and Africa the airman took an upward slant to look ior the moon by which to set bis course. And then the most terrifying of all things in Nature to a man m his position happened. The sky was covered with black clouds, and out of them rolled the most'appalling thunderstorm. “ Chain lightning,” says Mr Hinkler, was everywhere. I have never s ? en anything like it. I had to fly right through the storm, and every minute for an hour or more I expected that the next (lash would go right tinough the shin. Scared? Oh, yes, i was scared right enough. I never thought then that I should live to grow a long white beard. But 1 had to go on, you see. There was nothing else to do.” After that, it seems, everything was plain sailing. " I got to Africa by breakfast time all right. I had aimed when I started on a place on the coast ten miles from Bathurst, and I passed the const first at a point only ton miles from my objective. I recognised it li’om the shape. I bad never flown over that coast before, but I bad studied it all ou the map and knew what to look for. J found my course by compass and dead reckoning alone.”-