AERIAL EFFICIENCY

Northern Advocate, 3 July 1928, Page 5

AERIAL EFFICIENCY

HENDON SPECTACLE TWO HUNDRED MACHINES. THRILLING EPISODES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received noon.) RUGBY, July 1

The King and Queen, the Duke of York, and most members of the Cabinet, with air attaches and other representatives of nearly every nation of the world, saw at Hendon yesterday the greatest display over staged in the air, when 300 machines and 3,,100 officers and mmi of the Royal Air Force took part in the ninth annual air pageant.

There was a crowd of 1.10,000 people, and it is estimated that another 300,000 who could not be accommodated watched from outside.

They saw an astonishing display of aerial efficiency, with machines of all sizes .and descriptions,, from the Beardmore Inflexible experimental airplane (which is the largest in the world, weighs PI tons, has a 150-fect wing span, and has 3,000 h.p. in its Rolls-Royce engines), to a tiny singleseater Moth, and a tail-less rear-pro-pelled machine known as a Pterodactyl.

Many episodes thrilled the crowd, including aerial battles, artillery spotting, and firing at observation balloons, and bombing.

Some of the manoeuvres included inverted loops and upward spirals, and the profusion displayed in aerial drill, the orders in which were heard by the spectators through loud-speakers, tilled the expert air attaches from other nations with admiration for the Air Force personnel and the machines. Contrasted with the speed shown by many of the airplanes was an exhibition of slow-motion flying, when manoeuvres were performed with a machine equipped with the new British slotted-wing safety device, which in ordinary circumstances must have resulted In disaster. Once again this annual exhibition was given without the slightest mishap. The financial proceeds go to the Air Force and allied charities. ■

A cabled description of the appearance of the-Inflexible says: “The public gasped, and foreign air attaches were amazed at the first public appearance at the annual pageant at Hendon of Britain’s ’last word’ giant bomber, Inflexible. The viciouslooking, all-metal, three-engined monoplane, with its 150 ft span, its uptilted, back-bent, and rakish wings, proved to be amazingly mobile, and a quick climber.”