GIANT AIR BOATS

Evening Star, Issue 25768, 15 April 1946, Page 8

GIANT AIR BOATS

SIX-ENGINED MONSTERS (From our Correspondent.) (By Air ilail.; LONDON, April 4. Immediately after tlie war there vvas a tendency to favour the landplane as against the seaplane for long-distance flight development. Now the pendulum appears to be swinging back in the opposite direction. Tne Ministry of Civil Aviation has placed a £1,000,01)0 order for three giant flying boats for Britain's overseas air routes. These will be built in the Isle of Wight and will be Saunders-lloe S4ss. They are to be six-engined, with a 220 ft wing span, driven by gas-turbine airscrews, and have a cruising speed of about 300 miles per hour. They will accommodate a hundred passengers The advantage of the airboat over the landplane is that no special runways have to be constructed to receive the immense impact of a 100 or 200-ton machine landing, and also, of course, in case of emergency, they can land on the sea. It seems reasonably certain that we shall in the course of the next decade or so witness, on a far more rapid scale, a development in air liners comparable with that over the past century in sea-going liners. In fact, lie would be a bold prophet who ventured at this stage to set any limitations to the evolution of air travel