RACERS OF THE SKY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 13 June 1925, Page 4

RACERS OF THE SKY

THRILLS IN THE MR FRAXUE HOLDS SPEED RECORD What i.« the greatest pace at -which, muichim; !■• w in an aerial ninn.-tcr with a inii'ii! v motor, stnealit lined Imli ami tinv wings. a man can go hurtling aire-s the . Tlic most, brilliant ib signers of great nations, ami the most expert pilots, are busily til.inning now. for tin- new air season dawning, a series if flights which in their sheer thrill, should eclipse anything we have seen beioic. When, recently, wit It a monoplane racer attaining 220 miles an hour. Franee wrested the blue riband of speed front the United Slates- where il had been hold al 2bb miles an hour—astute brains in lire American air world set themselves the. task of recapturing this record. Great new aero engines have, been produced. .Machines which are more like projectiles than airplanes tire being evolved, writes Mr Harry Harper m the London Daily (lironicle. while aerial joekevs of phenomenal dexterity arc making ready to get the last, mile of speed out of these racers of the sky. Wings are being reduced in size to gain a few miles an hour. Landingwheels are to he dropped, once a- craft is in Might, to lessen head-resistance, the machine alighting afterwards upon a simple skid device. Elans are shaping also, to abolish wheels altogether, and in shoot new record-breakers into the air from hydraulic carriages running along rails. France is not resting oil her laurels. Far from it. At the present moment site is preparing to add another twelve miles an hour to the record and to take it to ,500 miles an hour. Reckoning every new expedient which suggests itself, experts now believe it should be possible to send a machine which is built for .speed, and for speed alone, rushing through the air at 320, or even perhaps at 330, miles ;m hour! And yet one remembers how, in the infancy of lligld. there were technicians who predicted Unit 100 miles tin hour would lie I lie limi! of aerial speed. Adjutant Round, who. like Sadi Loeointe. is one of France's special “speed kings," is to niak;. the new tests. 1 'lint's who handle these new superspeed 'planes need not only to be horn airmen, with “hands'’ of a marvellous delieary, hut I heir nerves require In he of steel and their physical condition superb. They must be athletes as well as pilots, and. even so, they are often exhausted men when they climb front the cockpit- of one of these distance-de-vouring ern.ft which, when at their utmost speed, rush through the air with a, murmur rising to a roar, flash above the heads of those gazing upward, and vanish, with distant, metallic multerings.

The strain of such colossal speeds is tremendous, the faligu P intense. Airracing pilots, even though they may be the fittest- men in the world, know moments when,' just for an instant, they have the feeling that flesh and blood can barely stand such strains. It is then, though, that their splendid fitness, their experience and their flawless technique co.m c in a flash to their assistance, and once more, unfalteringly, they are masters of the situation.