SIR ALAN COBHAM’S PROPHECY.

Grey River Argus, 31 December 1927, Page 3 (Supplement)

SIR ALAN COBHAM’S PROPHECY.

THOUSAND MILES AN HOUR. Britain’s greatest airman has hazarded an astounding prophecy. Writing in “Tit-Bits,” he says: “I believe that it will be possible to fly round the world in a day, for all that is required is the ability to travel at 1,000 miles an hour, the circumference of the earth being about 24,000 miles on any great circle. If we fly against the rotation of the earth, and start at noon on the Equator, going westward, the sun will remain directly above us all the time, and it will be noon at every place we pass over. To-day, after less than 20 years of practical aviation, we can fly at 300 miles an hour, so I do not consider the possibility of flying at 1,000 miles an hour in any way a wild dream. As everybody knows, the greater the altitude the less dense becomes the atmosphere, and the thing which retards forward speed is wind or air resistance. That is why a racing machine is streamlined to the utmost.

“We have machines to-day that could fly at 1,000 miles an hour, providing we could get them to develop full power at an altitude of twelve miles. It requires as much power to drive a machine at 228 miles an hour at sea-level as it does at 1,000 miles an hour at twelve miles altitude.

*‘■l believe that young people living to-day will in time be able to fly from America to Australia in a day, and that they will be able to journey from New York to London overnight.”