A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 160, 26 June 1930, Page 6

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT

The name of Kingsford-Smith will for all time stand out prominently among those of the pioneering adventurers in aerial transport. He had already done quite sufficient to assure him of this, but he has now crowned all by being the first to accomplish the east-to-west crossing of the North Atlantic on a heavier-than-air machine. This fine achievement has, too, been carried through under notably adverse conditions. At almost all times the air currents in this quarter of the globe are in favour of the passage in the other direction, but in his case the contrary winds seem, from the brief accounts so far received, to have been peculiarly persistent. Fogs over the north-eastern fringe of the American continent are always to be expected, but, for him they would appear to have been exceptionally dense. This is well attested by the fact that even so experienced a navigator as he is lost his bearings and had to hover about for hours in search of a landing-place. At time of waiting we have yet to hear how it was that he eventually located himself and made a safe descent at Harbour Grace in Newfoundland.

The great thing is that he has got there, and has thus carried through a feat that stands. to no' other man’s credit. Certainly he has failed to completely fulfil the task he had set himself of a non-stop flight to New York. But possibly it is just as well thaf the wonderful journey started and finished on Imperial soil. It may be said by the cynical that achievements of this kind, heroic as they may be, are of little practical value, perhaps exposing rather than disproving the difficulties in the way. But this, of course, is a foolish thought, for aerial travel, despite the wonderfully rapid advances it has made, is a. yet in its infancy, and every conquest of Nature such as this encourages fresh effort towards the perfection of craft that will make such longdistance travel relatively safe for the ordinary citizen. Above all, it fosters a spirit of adventure which, by force of example, may be infused in quarters where it seems badly needed. If only British capitalists and industrialists would catch the infection and take some like risks abroad, there would be much greater hope for the development of the vast resources of the Empire and for the establishment of its commercial place in the world.