BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

Evening Star, Issue 22085, 19 July 1935, Page 2

BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

[By Gypsy Moth.] SMITHY’S PLANS. Mysterious plans are attributed to Sir Charles Kmgsford Smith (who has recently had an operation performed on his nose) by Mr Norman Ellison, Australia’s best-known aviation writer, in the Sydney Referee.’ Sir Charles, he says, ‘is feeling very cheery, a very sore nose notwithstanding. The nose, to use his own expres- • sion, has been ‘ rebored.’ It’s a noso that has been broken no fewer than five times, the breakers including a tram, a tennis racket, a concrete floor, and fists. But Sir Charles is smiling —the Federal Government has done the decent thing and bought the Southern Cross—for £3,000. So he can now pay back Sir Macpherson Robertson for his centenary air race loan, keep the Lady Southern Cross—tho other backers have been reimbursed—and plan other ventures without a financial headache. -

“ Our Tame Dodo is already muttering things about an overseas trip that involves the crossing of two oceans. But Dodo’s voice is so thick with excitement that, we cannot learn how the crossings will be made. Pending further information, we’ll guess at both plane and steamer. One for each. An interpretation that might be placed on the last paragraph is that the airman will go to the United States by ship and then fly Lady Southern Cross over the Atlantic to Britain.

And once there, , why not another England-Australia flight, completing Sir Charles’s second circuit of the globe?

AIR-MINDED AND AIR-MAD. Mr Ormsby-Gore, First Commissioner of Works in the British Cabinet; in an address at Stafford, said the youth of Germany was being taught not merely to be air-minded but air-mad. Obviously if any country had an air force Germany had a right to an air force, but its size and character concerned everj’ -country in Europe. * She was now engaged in setting the pace, and a very hot pace, too. In order to maintain parity in air strength with Germany, Britain had to announce a further gigantic and expensive increase in home defence air force, and carry out that expansion in the minimum of time if Britain were not to he at Germany’s mercy and dictation should she ever in the future desire to make diplomatic demands upon us. “ Let us by all means pursue the idea of political,' air, and other pacts on the Locarno model inside the Covenant of the League,” Mr Ormsby-Gore- added, “ but I have a feeling that unless air pacts are accompanied by definite limitations the peoples of the world cannot have that sense of security which alone can ensure peace.” CHANGING THE IMPERIAL ROUTE. In order to investigate a matter ia connection with the use of seaplanes for the Indian section of the Empire route, Mr F. Tymms, Director of Civil Aviation, recently made a tour by air over the country east of Jodphur. He was accompanied by Major M. Barclay, of Imperial Airways. The inspection of the route revealed the interesting fact that there exist more natural landing places for seaplanes than for landplanes. Eastern Rajputana is packed with irrigation tanks and other expanses of water. The use of seaplanes for the transIndian journey would cut out Jodphur as a halting place. Udaipur would he used instead, the landing being made upon Udaipur Lake. Udaipur lies somewhat to the south of Jodhpur. PRAISE FOR AIR MAIL. Mr J. B. Priestley remarks in his book, ‘ English Journey,’ that our great ocean liners mean to-day something of what the cathedrals meant in the Middle Ages. After the launching of the Queen Mary it is easy to agree with him, and to understand that the same kind of pride and devotion which could work miracles intone must have been present to inspire the creation of suon marvels as these modern ships (states the ‘ Imperial Airways Gazette’). “ But the liners of the air are nob less wonderful. If in a great Cunarder you almost forget that you are at sea, so in a big air-liner do you find it hard to realise that you are in an aeroplane. The long saloons that look like railway PuUmans, the meals laid- before you, the reading lamp at your elbow! and the bell that summons the steward —this is not flying, it is travelling de luxe. And *de luxe ’ is the right expression, since nothing but . travel through the air can give such speed and smoothness of motion., “ Clearly a weight of 14 tons, moving steadily at 100 miles an hour, it not likely to he deflected much by chance blows or breezes. A bicycle may bump, and wobble on an uneven road whose inequalities are. absolutely imperceptible to the, occupants of a motor coach. Very similar is the difference between an air-liner of the Heracles type and an ordinary non-commercial aeroplane.”