The Hawera Star. TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1925. THE RETURN OF R33.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 21 April 1925, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 1925. THE RETURN OF R 33.

Delivered every evening by 5 o’clock -ii Hawera, M.inaia, Nnrmanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki. Kaponga, Alton. Hurleyvillc, Patea, VVaverley, Mokoia, Whakaina'n, Oharigai. Meremere, Fraser Road, and Ararata.

Looking behind the quiet and confident attention to duty on the part of FlightLieutenant. Booth and the crew cf R 33. which saved to the nation a valuable airship, and brought; the whole of Britain to the tiptoe of breathless admiration and anxiety, important results may be expected from this exploit of riding out the storm. The attention of the whole Empire has been caught and focussed on the gallant battle with the elements waged above the, North Sea; it needs no further words to prove that the airship has passed its experimental stage. England's experience of the Zeppelins during the war, although bv no means happy, was not a great advertisement for the lighter-than-nir craft as ships of battle. The Germans scored several hits —it was perhaps due more to bad luck than to bad. management that, they missed the vitals of London—but British aeroplanes took steady toll of the raiders, and the psychological effect London of a Zeppelin sinking earthwards in flames fully compensated for half-a-dozen partly successful visits. The one thing that could be held to have been proved was that airships could make, long-distance flights, at night and under perfect control, and, spared interference; could return safely to their home port; and that was a les-

son from which the world was able to profit when it came to consider peace flying and the organisation of commercial aviation. Recent performances by foreign airships —the trans-Atlantic flight of the German vessel which was handed to American on account of reparation debts, and the one-day ocean to ocean flight, in the States—have confirmed the lessons of the war in respect of the possibilities of the lighter-than-air type of machine. But the public wanted something more than a knowledge that airships could cross the Atlantic in favourable weather conditions. When the All Red air route has been fully mapped out and the. service is inaugurated, sailings will have to be regular in all weathers, and reliable, if the scheme is ever to progress beyond the novelty stage. When Flight-Lieu-tenant Booth brought the damaged R 33 safely to anchor at Pulliam, after “the finest achievement with an airship in any country,” he had proved that his was no fair-weather craft, but a ship built to defy the raging of the heavens, and to assert the triumph of man over the air. These Englishmen, whose safe return from before the gale was to*them “nothing at all,” but to their fellow countrymen one of the great stories of the air, have added another milestone, on the forward march of the science of flying.