6500-MILE FLIGHT

Grey River Argus, 20 September 1945, Page 3

6500-MILE FLIGHT

By

U.S. Planes

JAPAN TO WASHINGTON (Rec. 9.30) WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 The U.S. War Department has announced that three Superfortresses have left the Mizutani airfield, in the southern part of the island of Hokkaido, north Japan, on a non-stop flight if six thousand miles to Washington. They are regular combat Sunerfortresses.- Their turrets and some of their armour have been removed Each plane is carrying a crew of twelve. All them are veterans of the bombing raids against Japan. The planes are respectively commanded by Lieutenant Generol Barney Giles, Major General Curtis Lemay, ■ and Brigadier General Emmett O’Donnell.

The course of the flight is that of the Great Circle, the route being over the Kurile Islands (north of Japan), across the Aleutian Islands, over the Canadian Rockies and across Minnesota. Michigan, and Washington. The flight is intended as a concrete example of the current and the future potentialities of air power. The Superfortresses left around 8 p.m. G.M.T. on Tuesday, they are scheduled to complete the trip in twenty-five or twenty-six hours. The War Department withheld the announcement of the flight until the planes had made radio contact with the Aleutian Island bases. The flight will take advantage of favourable prevailing winds at a height of around thirty thousand feet or more. The planes roughly are following the course of the Japanese '-ncendiary balloons, which also were launched from Hokkaido. Each plane is carrying nine thousand gallons of fuel. FASTER BRITISH PLANES (Rec. 11.20) LONDON, Sept. 19 The British Ministry of Aircraft Production revealed some details of the Vampire jet-propelled plane and the Hornet, which were largely of wooden construction. The Vampire, a twin-boom, single-seater plane, powered with a single De HavillandGoblin engine, has a speed of over five hundred miles an hour. It is all of' metal, with a wing-span of forty feet, and a length of thirty feet six inches. The Hornet is a single-seater, powered by two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, with contra-rotating propellers, has a wing-span of forty-five feet, a length of thirty-four feet six inches, a speed of 470 miles an hour, and a range of 25,000 miles with long-range tanks, and a ceiling of 35.000 feet. It carries four twentymillimetre cannon.