AERIAL TEST.

Northern Advocate, 30 January 1922, Page 5

AERIAL TEST.

CIRCLING THE GLOBE

AMBITIOUS NOTION THWARTED.

LONDON, Jan. 27

Sir Ross Smith has completed arrangements for an attempt to fly round .the world. He has reluctantly abandoned his first plan, which was to race in an aeroplane against an airship which lie hoped to borrow from the Air Ministry and man with a volunteer crew, which is still obtainable.

Sir Ross Smith proposed to have six ■week's start of the airship, by wh'ch time he would have reached Japan with luck, going via India. The airship •would then have followed him to Japan, \ia Russia. While the airship made for San Francisco direct, 'Sir Ross Smith would have reached America via Alaska. The airship would then have followed the route taken by R34 when it crossed the Atlantic, while the aeroplane would have gone via the Azores.

The Air Ministry, however, was unsympathetic, and refused to allow any airship to fly pending a decision whether the Government's airships will be required for an Imperial servicc. How ever, if £30,000 can be collected it wi'.i 2till be possible to build a small airship able to give Sir Ross Smith a race.—A -and N.Z.