CROSSING IRAQ

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 17 May 1941, Page 10

CROSSING IRAQ

VALUE OF AIR ROUTES LANDING AND FUEL CENTRES A description of the latest war zone was given in an interview by Dr. W. A. Fairclough, of Auckland, who visited Basra and Iraq shortly before the outbreak of war. Basra, which is on the Shatt-al-Arab river at the head of the Persian Gulf, he described as a valuable port, the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers giving enough water to berth quite large ships at the wharves. “The town.” he said, “is about three miles from the airport, where the Shatt-al-Arab Hotel is the headquarters of Imperial Airways and of the H.L.M. line. The hotel is a magnificent structure, built of stone with walls two feet thick, for temperature reasons, and was luxuriously furnished in modern style by one of London’s big furnishing companies, its interior giving quite ar. unexpected note amid the Eastern surroundings.” LAKE lIABBANIA “On the river in front of the hotel,” he continued, “the Imperial Airways flying-boats land, while the land machines use the large aerodrome behind the hotel. The through traffic is chiefly from Europe to Karachi, 1500 miles away, and then on through India to Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and Australia and New Zealand. “Lake Habbania. which has been mentioned in the cable news, is about 250 miles from Basra, the route to it passing up the Euphrates Valley, where the Garden of Eden may have been and where archaeologists have been excavating during recent years. Lake Habbania is surrounded by desert but although no inlet is visibile it is probably fed by the Euphrates, which is not far away to the north-east. Bagdad is about 50 miles away. “Imperial Airways use the lake as a landing and refuelling point and there is an aedrome near by. Ramadi, an

important road junction, is also close at hand, and two lakes of bitumen are in the vicinity. It was on Lake Habbania that the Imperial Airways flyingboat Calpurnia came to grief about 18 months ago during a stand-storm. PETROLEUM PIPE LINE “Leaving Habbaniyah and crossing from Iraq to Syria, a distance of 200 miles, is Rutbah Wells, a place that will no doubt come into the war news. Here aerodromes and fuelling stations are established and here too is the junction of the road from Damascus and Amman on the way to Ramadi and Bagdad. In 1920 the Royal Air Force made a plough track through the desert from Damascus to Bagdad, and this remained for many years as a navigation guide. “The Iraq Petroleum Company’s pipe-line and one of the pumping stations are near by, and the pipe line carries on to Haifa. From Rutbah Wells to Cairo or Alexandria is about .W 0 miles, passing through Transjorc nia and Palestine to Egypt. The air route follows the Petroleum Company’s pipe-line for some hundreds of miles, and the DamasciisAmman railway and the River Jordan are crossed. Several landing places and fuelling depots, one of them on the Sea of Galilee, are established on the route.”