AVIATION.

Grey River Argus, 17 July 1922, Page 5

AVIATION.

BLAKE REACHES BAGDAD. A GRAPHIC NARRATIVE. BAGDAD. July 14. Blake stated that the journey from Aboukir was full of incident. On landing at Ziza the shock absorber of Hie under-carriage gave way. The damage was soon repaired, but Alalins was suffering from the heat, and it was necessary to send a wireless to Amman for a doctor. He thought Alalins would be better for a clay’s rest, so they deferred the start for Bagdad, and camped for the night in the desert, Ziza being a mere spot in the desert fifty miles east of the Dead Sea. There was not a regular aerodrome. On. Wednesday morning the two machines began the flight to Bagdad over the six hundred miles of waterless desert, marked only by the track which a motor convoy made last year. as the pilot of the Vickers-Vernon had done the journey before he led the way. The Vickers-Vernon also carried the stores , including fifteen gallons of drinking water and emergency rations." Blake proceeded, “We had been flying one and a half hours when the Vi-ckers-Vernon lost her way owing to our distracting the pilot’s attention by living close to his machine to enable Alalins to obtain photographs. The Vi-ckers-Vernon landed and we followed, but went up again and searched for the route. When we found it the Vickers-Vernon followed behind us. Tne heat was intense, and we -experienced terrific bumps. The heat was so great that the Vickers-Vernon could not rise above five hundred feet, and two wireless aerials were carried away as a result of hitting rocks. Half an hour later the Vickers-Vernon had to descend Again, as repairs to oil pumps were necessary, but the engine was still running badly so I decided to continue alone. Flying until dusk, we landed a’- Eljid, where we were well received by the Arabs, one of whom wore a rusty gillette razor suspended from his right ear. After we kissed the sheiks and the headman, a sheep was killed in our honour, and we were forced to carry away the bleeding carcase in our aeroplane. At dawn on Thursday we started on the last lap oi the Bagdad flight. On several occasions we had to fly around in circles, before we could pick up the track, and consequently exhausted our petrol before reaching Ramadie. This was awkward, but by draining all the petrol tanks, and pouring the spirit thus obtained into one gravity tank, we just managed to raise enough to enable us to get into th-e air again and crawl to Ramadie. Here a political officer gave us beer and food, and a few minutes later a machine from Bagdad, whicn was searching the desert for us as we were long overdue, appeared; thus we reached Bagdad sorry spectacles, unshaven and dirty, as we were unable to wash for the preceding three days, but all felt quite fit after having food and a bath. Th-e aeroplane engine Is behaving splendidly.”