SCHNEIDER CUP PILOTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 243, 12 September 1929, Page 8

SCHNEIDER CUP PILOTS.

INUNDATED WITH CHARMS. “You may die to-morrow” is the title of a tract that Flying Officer Atcherley, Britain’s Schneider Cup ace, received the other day by post from an American spiritualist society, which gave a code whereby “if you cross over you may communicate with friends left behind.” “Merry Atcherley,” as his friends call him, read the tract to his fellow pilots, took up tho Supermarine S 6, and gave the most thrilling exhibition of high-speed stunting ever seen at Calshot. The British team was pestered by cranks and other well-meaning people throughout the country. The pilots were inundated with charms, mascots and armlets, which were said to guarantee safety and even victory. The pilots, however, regretted that the race would be won by a flying machine, not a Christmas tree.

A very small boy with a very big job is 15-year-old Raymond Lane, who arrived at Calshot from tlie Glosfer Aircraft Company’s Cheltenham works to assist the Gloster-Napier Schneider machines’ mechanics. Lane was chosen because of his smallness enables him to crawl into the most awkward corners of the long, slender fuselages to tighten up nuts and bolts that would be inaccessible to others. He knows that he carries the lives of the world’s finest pilots in his hands, but he is not alarmed, says a London paper commenting on his work. “I never leave a nut or screw until T make sure it is immovable,” he said. He is the Gloster Company’s youngest apprentice.