Ex-Palmerstonian Has Air Base Plan

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 114, 17 May 1939, Page 4

Ex-Palmerstonian Has Air Base Plan

BRITISH MINISTER INTERESTED Many Palmerstonians will remember Mr. F. T. Vasey who was a resident of the city for a number of years following the Great War. In 1934 he returned to England to set up in business as a draper in Barnstaple, Devonshire. Recent news received of him brings him into prominence as the author of a scheme to create an Empire air base in the estuary of the river Taw, three miles from his new home town, at a cost of £750,000. The plan is to dam the River Taw so that an area a mile across will be flooded to a minimum depth of 17ft. On top of the dam, about 500 yards wide, would run a road linking Braunton with Bideford via Instow, affording a saving of many miles over the present route. Mr. Vasey first put his scheme to the Barnstaple Chamber of Commerce. They liked it, and the Air Ministry was approached last July, with the result that Sir Kingsley Wood, Minister for Air, agreed to visit Barnstaple to discuss the idea with Mr. Vasey. The “Sunday Dispatch” records that it has taken Mr. Vasey nearly two years to work out his scheme. “I have never worked at anything to do with aeroplanes, and I am not an engineer,” he told a reporter. “Before I came to Barnstaple I was publicity manager for a departmental store in New* Zealand. Most of my friends were connected with the air, and naturally I became interested. I have a lot of friends who are pilots over there They have helped me, and I have also had the help of surveyors and civil engineers. They assure me the scheme is quite practical. Au air base here would be almost invulnerable. It is on the

direct air route to Canada and America, and it i« one hop from here to Portugal or to West Africa.”