MOTOR BANDITS

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 April 1933, Page 3

MOTOR BANDITS

’PLANES TO TRACE CARS. LONDON, February 20. The Surrey police are investigating the possibility of using aeroplanes against motor bandits. Suggested plans of action have been discussed with the chief officials of the Brooklands Flying School, and in a few weeks’ time tests involving a staged motor-bandit raid, with a. subsequent chase, will be made. “The idea is to reproduce as accurately as possible the conditions of a bandit raid,” Capt. Duncan Davis, managing director of the school, said yesterday. ‘•lnformation of the ‘raid’ will be

telephoned to the school, and immediately one or more private pilots will take off in the direction in which the raiders have gone. They will keep in touch with the police by wireless, so that all later information will be available for them. At a certain height it will be possible for a pilot to recognise any particular make of car, rush head, and drop message bags for motor-cycle patrols. This idea is in the. tentative stage at the moment, and the tests may determine its practicability.” In cases where the bandits abandon a stolen car and take to the woods the aeroplane would circle about the area and notify the ground police when the pursued men break cover. Air photography may also prove a useful aid in the capture of bandits.