AIRSHIP TRAVEL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22108, 14 May 1935, Page 10

AIRSHIP TRAVEL

PLANS FOE FUTURE TRANS-OCEAN SERVICES PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC Confidence that large airships will provide the popular means of transocean travel in the future was expressed yesterday by Mr. P. W. Litchfield, president of the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company and the GoodyearZeppelin Corporation and a leading American industrialist, who is passing through Auckland by the Aorangi on his way to Australia and the East. Mr. Litchfield said that his faith in lighter-than-air craft had not been lessened by the disasters which had overtaken large British and American airships in recent years. They delayed but did not stop the progress-in airship design and construction. "No definite plans are being made for the future," Mr Litchfield said. "At present a new merchant marine and airship bill is before Congress in Washington and we are waiting to discover tho declared policy of the Government toward airship travel-. In spite of the development of aeroplanes, airships are destined to bo tho long-dis-tance carriors of overseas passengers and mails, if only because of the fact that they allow for greater comfort and larger loads. An airship is tliroe times as fast as the fastest steamer and, although an aeroplane may be twice as fast as an airship, the lighter-than-air machine, fully developed, is obviously tho most suitable for long journeys " Problem of Coat Mr. Litchfield said that services across tho Atlantic and the Pacific were projected. He had negotiated in 1926 the Zeppelin rights for America and the whole scheme of airship services required working out on an international basis. The proposed Atlantic route would be developed in conjunction with Dr. Hugo Eckener, whoso memorable flights in tho Graf Zeppelin were now being taken almost as a matter of course. A scheduled Pacific crossing could be made by airships in six days, representing a substantial saving in time as against a steamer passage. However, the cost ot an airship suitable for lonp ocean flights would be in tho neich bourhood of £1.500,000, and it would probably be obsolete before it had completed its designed period of useful ness. Some form of subsidy would b» necessary to enable airships to compete with ocean liners. Tho President of th>United States had recently asked fo> a change in tho form of subsidy, awa* from the granting of ocean mail con tracts, and in all probability a morr equitable system would be devised. Use of Helium Gas "In all airships, helium gas woulr' be provided to give lifting power," Mr Litchfield continued. "It is not inflame mable like hydrogen and it is now beiny produced in Colorado and Texas at a greatly reduced cost. A few years aao helium used to cost 100 dollars per 1000 cubic feet, but to-day the cosi has fallen to seven dollars." Mr. Lichfield is accompanied on hi.present trip by Mr. E. M. Eickmani and Mr A. Goulding, who are both associated with his company, and Dr. J. S Millard, medical director of the company's staff hospital at Akron where he is in charge of an institution of 25 beds, staffed by six doctors and 15 nurses, established for the benefit of 14.500 employees. After visitine tho company's factory in Sydney, the partv will proceed to Java to attend the opening of a new tyre factory to supply the whole of the Dutch East Indies They will also visit the companv's rubber plantation in Sumatra before returning to the United States.