NINE DAYS' WONDER.

Northern Advocate, 25 February 1925, Page 2

NINE DAYS' WONDER.

BY AIR TO LONDON. A DREAM WHICH IS TO COME TRUE. The dream of an air transport service from London to Australia is destined to materialise sooner than wo think. Stages have already been planned to permit of the flight being mado in nine days with, all-metal machines of giant size. The service will fly "express" over 13,000 miles of land and sea, and will beggar the most florid of Jules Verne's imaginings. The British Air Ministry, having obtained tenders from British firms : for the building of' multi-engined flying transports, are now ordering the construction of machines of new types, which, will represent a fresh era in air design. Carrying a big load, they will have such a fuel capacity that they will be able to fly long distances without alighting. Several of the giants, equipped with, an engine-plant which frees them almost entirely from any risk of forced landing, are, it lias been decided, to be built throughout of metal. The latest weight-sav-ing schemes, wliich have been developed decently, during the construction of warplanes of steel, will be incorporated in these new trans-Em-pire craft. While construction and experiment are proceeding, an expert survey is being made of the problem of operating day-and-night air routes from London through to Sydney. It is reckoned, now, that the airways of Empire should operate over a series of stages. Such air-links are now planned as follows: —

Sta'ge. Miles. London-Malta 1500 Malta-Cairo 1050 Cairo-Bagdad 900 Bagdad-Karachi 1500 Karachi-Calcutta 1400 Calcutta-Rangoon 700 Rangoon-Singapore 1200 Singapore-British N. Borneo 1100 British N. Borneo-British New Guinea 1000 British New Guinea-Port Darwin (Australia) 900 Port Darwin-Sydney 1900 WINGED EXPRESSES. A first time-table has been prepared for this route across the globe, passing for more than 13,000 miles above land and sea. Thfe total time of the winged "express," as apart from the time spent in halts at stations, will not be more than 131£ hours, or rather less than six days of continuous night and day travel through, the sky. If necessary on long stages, refuelling will be carried out in midair, winged "tankers" rising from intermediate stations and replenishing the stores of the express arid cargo 'planes by means of special flexible tube connections.

What has been prepared in view of the forthcoming tests across oceans with new-tube airships is a tentative time-table for <a complete round-the-world journey, starting from London by aeroplane, and making use of airship "liners" over such stages as the Atlantic and Pacific. According to this time-table a traveller, ascending from the London air-station in the morning, in an aeroplane capable of 105 miles an hour, would, flying via Paris, reach Constantinople on the following morning, and Cairo by noon the same day. Then, in a long-distance machine, with sleeping as well as day accommodation, he would speed to Australia, arriving there on the ninth clay after leaving London. A HIGH-FLYING AGE. The new air age promises to be a high-flying age. The 100 miles an hour of present-type aeroplanes will, it is considered, be exceeded greatly by adapting machines so that they can take full advantage of the lessened resistance of the air at high altitudes. Before long we may look back on flying machines of today

j driving a laborious way through retarding lower air, with that same pity with which a traveller in the blue-and-gpld Riviera express would let his thoughts wander back to the time when, sitting in open trucks, the first railway travellers jolted along with cinders from the engine blowing into their faces. Wonderful results are rewarding an eight-years' research in sending aeroplanes up to high altitudes, and there making them fly miles an hour faster than would be possible in dense air near the earth's surface. Fantastic, till we are accustomed to them, will be the timetables of tremendous slim-hulled air-liners, soaring for their high ' altitude rushes across the world. London .is a journey in which the weeks of earth transport will shrink to something like sixty hoars! It will revolutionise the economy of the world. ''