AVIATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 October 1927, Page 5

AVIATION

FRISCO—SYDNEY MAIL. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) SAN FRANCISCO, October 27. The Australian air mail, which Smith was to have carried, may be cancelled. Smith applied for permission to carry 1500 letters. The postal authorities agreed to allow transportation, provided it was not limited to that amount. Consequently 4000 letters, which were marked for the air mail to Australia, arrived at the Post Office, after which Smith informed the authorities that he undertook only to take fifteen hundred letters supplied to himself, not those placed by the general public with the Post Office. SIR A. COBHAM’S FLYING-BOAT. LONDON, October 27. Sir A. Cobham, prior to his departure to circumnavigate Africa, in an all-metal short Rolls-Royce flying boat, will attempt to break the speed record for a seaplane carrying 44091b5. The present record is 109.2 miles per hour. Sir A. Cobham will carry a crew of four. His is the world’s largest allmetjal flying boat, and it can carry a maximum of twenty persons. BRITAIN’S DEFENCE—BOMBERS. LONDON, October 27. Hawker Rolls-Royce daylight bombing planes, valued at over half a million sterling apiece, are now being completed. It is intended to equip them for home defence squadrons, and for this purpose from seventy to eighty of these machines will be required.