TO INDIA AND BACK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20324, 3 August 1929, Page 13

TO INDIA AND BACK.

FLIGHT BY DUCHESS.

START MADE FROM LYMPNE

Australian Press Association —United Service (Received August -• 10.35 p.m.) LONDON*, Aug. 2. The Duchess of Bedford started from Lympne, Kent, at dawn to-day on an attempt to fly to India and back in a week in the monoplane Spider. The pilots are Captain C. D. Barnard and Mr. Bob Little.

They hope to do the journey in four hops, the first tD Sofia, the second to Aleppo, the third to Bushire, and the fourth to Karachi.

The Duchess of Bedford is herself .-rblo to pilot a machine, and flics her own small aeroplane. She, with Captain Barnard and Flying-Officer E. H. Alliott, attempted to make a record flight to India last June in tho aeroplane Princess Xenia, but a slight accident at Bushire detained them for some days. Captain Barnard and Flying-Officer Alliott flew back from Karachi to Croydon, arriving on September 26, after a record for the journey from India to England, four and a-half days. Tho Princess Xenia —which is probably the machine now used by the Duchess, as she was in negotiation for its purchase in May last, when it was being prepared for a long flight —was hired last year by the Duchess. She is a Fokker monoplane, with a 500 h.p. Bristol Jupiter engine. In this aeroplane Captain Mcintosh attempted to fly the Atlantic from Ireland, and she was also used by Captain Mcintosh and Mr. Pert ITinkler on a (light to India, which ended in their being driven down in a storm in Poland. The Jupiter is a famous British engine, and is built not only at Bristol but under licence in several foreign countries.