The Guardian (And Evening Star with which is in- corporated the West coast Times.) SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1937. LIMITS OF FLIGHT.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 June 1937, Page 4

The Guardian (And Evening Star with which is incorporated the West coast Times.) SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1937. LIMITS OF FLIGHT.

In IFis presidential address to the Royal Aeronautical Society, Mr H. It. Wim peris, Director of Scientific Research at the British Air Ministry, spoke of the natural limits to human flight. He dealt with the possibilities of height, speed and range, and justified the ‘‘rashness” of his. prophecies - by urging that they would encourage the resourcefulness of coming generations by providing them with the zest of knocking down his row of aeronautical ninepins. He pointed out that on. the globe, with a diameter of 8000 miles, the highest mountain, like the deepest sea, was onjy about five miles from the -surfaep. ,Hunjan beings were thus confined to a. very tfiip .shell in which to move and .have their being, and if . pver they were to hatch out from, their .shell they must, discover some , lifting power which did not require an atmosphere. In looking to high flying for high speed, it should b» remembered that engine power was as much affected by a change of air density as was the drag, and increasing the height of flight without paying attention to the way in which the engine was affected would be foolish. Increase of height also brought other effects. The most formidable of all Nature’s fences was the limit to the speed with which the air was able to get out of the way of the advancing aeroplane. Taking everything into consideration there was much to be said for setting the maximum possible “speed of level flight with the present type of engine at over 500 but below GOO miles an hour. With human speeds the forces exerted on the human body in manoeuvres would be increased. He had heard of an American experience of a force equal to 11 times gravity in which the victim needed hospital treatment, and of 15 times gravity leading to a complete crash. It followed that as machines became more speedy they must become less manoeuvresble and effect of this on “dog-fighting” sucljas was known in the past was obvious. Dealing with the question of high flying lie said that pressure suits or cabins made it possible theoretically to postpone indefinitely the failure of the human mechanism, and that the limit became solely that of the engine. He quoted the opinion of Mr F. S. Barnwell that an engine could he made to go to a height of. 61,000 ft. Quoting another forecast that a non-stop range of 12,500 miles might ultimately be possible, he said this would mean that every sinele spot on the earth could be reached from every other, a conclusion which would please those who had neat minds and alarm those who loved solitude.

“The new awakening of' interest among Americans in vague possibilities of usefulness abroad does not mean any fundamental change in our foreign outlook/’ said Mr Raymond Swing, broadcasting from New iork for the British Broadcasting Corporation. “'We still are grimly determined to remain aloof from international disputes or anything that might involve us in them. Neutrality legislation, so-called, has passed the Senate, and wiTt soon pass the House, with its surrender of our historic doctrine of the freedom of the seas. Looking b;}ck on the World War,. Congress says, in effect, that we were brought in because we defended those rights and because we permitted our entire economy to become dependent on the victory of the Allied side; and so we will stay out of another war by abandoning our rights at sea, and by making it impossible for us to be involved economically on a national scale. Trade with us, in a future war, must be on a cash-and-carry basis —that is, foreigners must pay cash for our goods, and carry them away in their own ships. They cannot buy munitions, to begin with, and they cannot contract loans tp buy non-contraband floods; and only a moderate amount of discretion will be left to the President to say under what circumstances an embargo shall be applied. This is isolation of a drastic nature, and the mood which insists on this legislation has to be borne in mind in measuring that extent to which President Roosevelt can go in international activity.”