GIANT OF THE AIR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20678, 25 September 1930, Page 8

GIANT OF THE AIR

RIOO'S PERFORMANCE. ... FLIGHT ACROSS ATLANTIC. PASSENGER'S IMPRESSIONS. [from our own correspondent.] LONDON. August 22. Gales, storms, rain and fog thoroughly tested the airship TCI.OO on her voyage across the Atlantic, but 57 hours after leaving St. Hubert airport, Montreal, she . was moored at Cardington with 3200 gallons of fuel in her tanks. Apart from damage, to the electrical cooking equipment by rain, which penetrated the fabric, the flight was without accident. While refuelling after mooring, however, one or two petrol tanks broke loose and crashed through the envelope. On Sunday the airship was transferred to her shed. Mr. Montagu Slater, the Daily Telagraph's special correspondent on the- voyage, says, in his description of the flight, that while there may be excitement—mostly by implication—in the clouds, there is more interest in life below. But there is a well-grounded conviction that it is only a matter of time before transatlantic airships will be the most commonplace things in the world. x "There was scarcely a suspicion of pitch or roll," says Mr. Slater. "No liner could be so steady. In the small hours of the stormy r.tght I went out to do . my shift at the pumps. Certainly the rain was coming through, in some places fairly heavily, but no one seemed inconvenienced. From the beginning our lives settled into a jog-trot rhythm. Wo slept in cabins with two or four bunks, just as in a ship Toilet arrangements were almost exactly like those on an American sleeper. Meals, until the cooker broke down, were excellent. The Airship's Shadow. "Dr. Johnson called a man a fool who went to sea without being forced, and certainly if a man does not enjoy prolonged looking out of the window, he will not like airship travel. In a sense what we saw out of the window was the real matter of our voyage. We thought of ourselves quite simply as being in a ship. For some reason, even at three thousand feet, we seemed to be flying low. "In the control-room, where the water seems so close, and the two steersmen manhandle the wheels; where the navigator marks his chart and the skipper works the engine signals—which are of the ordinary ship's pattern—to a rattle of signal bells; and where the light has the greenish tinge of an aquarium—why, it is as clear as this green daylight that we are on a ship's bridge! "The oddest thing was our shadow; m the morning it would swim behind us, but as the sun got higher it came closer and closer below. We called it the whale—and it looked like one, except for its curious purple tinge. In the evening it went ahead—sometimes you could see it swimming along far away as though heading us back. We got so used to thinking of our whale as a whale, and of our ship as a ship, that when, on Saturday morning, the ship took to the land, and the whale took to jumping /

over hedges, it seemed wro"<;. "Airship voyaging has already reached something like the modern ideal of travelling—that one should feel no weather.' No -wind batters nor sun scorches and we do not feel the sting of spray. It is almost like watching a journey on a film instead of taking one—except that there was no coffee or tea for a day!"

A Realisable Proposition

"It is a fine achievement, of which all connected with RIOO may be proud," says the- Daily Telegraph in a leading article, "and it is full of encouragement to go on. It is true that no records were broken, but record-breaking is not the first consideration, and on the homeward as on the outward run, with a little more luck of wind and weather much better times would have been accomplished. But the trip has proved that the regular air service which Sir Dennistoun Burrsey desires to establish between Great Britain and Canada is a realisable proposition. "Those whose one idea" is to reach the other side at something better than topmost speeds ■ may gladly endure the cramped monotony of airship travel. But it will be long before the shipping companies need grow nervous of their new and adventurous rival."