IN MID-AIR.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 17 March 1925, Page 3

IN MID-AIR.

JOINING A LINER. ,SUCCESSFUL TESTS. Airships that are also Hying aerodromes are a probability or the near ruture. An apparatus has been evolved and -.successfully tested whereby it is possible to hooK an aeroplane to -an airship in flight or to launch it from cne larger craft. . The apparatus is one of the most important inventions of recent times to commercial and military .aircraft. Lt will be possible for passengers by the great Ah-Red airship route which is to be opened between England and India to join the sky liner at any point along the route. Travellers can just as easily be set down wherever they desire. All tne while the airship will still he able to forge its way ahead. Military or naval airships will be able to transport bombing and fighting aeroplanes vast distances over land and sea and then, when hidden away behind the clouds, launch them suddenly on their errand of destruction. As soon as the machines have completed the task on which ,they set out they will return to the airship and be booked np again and carried off. These hornets’ nests of liie sky will iie able to inflict their sting suddenly, they will go snooping down , from the dying aerodrome, with all the advantage that being on top. means to aeroplanes. Instead of the radius of bombing aeroplanes being as limited as it is now, it will be possible to carry them many hundreds of miles before they set jut on their errand. The apparatus by which this has been made possible is of the simplest type. A metal hook is fitted over the centre section of the aeroplane. This catches on a email trapeze, swinging from cables slung under the airship. The aeroplane, when ■ it is hooked on. will,*if necessary, be drawn up into one of the gondolas of the air-liner.

Tests which have been carried out -how that there is no shock either to aeroplane or airship when a “landing” or a launching is made.