The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1922. AVIATION

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11187, 18 April 1922, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1922. AVIATION

Two events have just drawn close attention jto aviation. One, the sensational death of Sir Ross Smith, is a temptation to despair, while the other, the iesue of the prospectus of a company aiming at the establishment of an Imperial round-the-world air service, touches- firmly the springs pf hope. % Of these the first is in the category of heavier than air, and the second is the department the lighter than air variety, . The second has come before the public, sustained by expert: undeterred by the wreck of the big airship at Hull, witta.appalling loss of life. It remains to be seen whether the project will be adversely affected by the at Brooklands. The two are, as we have said, in different departments. But as the same sense of mystery is over both the air wrecks—that at Hull and that at Brooklands—it is quite possible that the Imperial Air Service may get a set-back, when it eomes iip for Parliamentary sanction. In the meantime, it is right to consider this Imperial project in the light of the support it is receiving. The proposed company is to deal with a share, plus"'debenture, capital of / £4,000,000, involving interest payments of 6.} per cent, on the share capital and 4i per cent, on the debentures of ten years-, aggregating £210,000 a year. The promoters are Vickers, Ltd., and the\ Shell Oil group, and they back their- faith by ' an offer to the British Government to take over its airships and plant, to add to the number of the ships, and to provide a weekly service capable of carrying 100 passengers, to Australia, at fares under present mail steamer rates. They require a guarantee from the Governments interested of £40,000 a year, nominally for teij- years, hut not, they affirm, likely to be required for more than five, or, in all, £200,000. It is a very important offer; in fact, a dazzling offer. For it is made by men of vast up-to-date experience who have specialised in aviation of both kinds, and'tmade great progress. , The striking thing, however, is not so much the character of the service as the standing of the men who are behind it. Moreover, they are backed by the willingness of the French Government to erect complete air stations at Paris, Marseilles, Tunis, and Algiers, for the whole service, while the company sets up itsi base for the Australian portion immediately after securing the desired Parliamentary ratification. Hero is strong proof of the expert belief in the reliability and profitable character of a very large air service.

Will the Parliaments and the investing public ' concerned accept the word of these expert promoters? It is a point emphasised by the Brooklands disaster. For light upon it we can look to the report of the Second Air Conference, held in London early last February. If what the British Air Minister, Captain Guest, said at that Conference is the deciding factor, the light reveals only despair. The Minister proclaimed that he had no faith whatever in the future of civil aviation. That means that, in his opinion, no improvement is possible in making a success of civil aviation, and that war, being a ■'thing of death and wounds and uncertainties, is the only proper field for the fliers of the world. It seems a strange view to take in the face of the' many services established in various parts of Europe, hut no man in Captißn Guest’s position would utter such an uncompromising view with such striking publicity, without a certain amount of expert backing. On the other hand, all the other members of the Conference were against him, and these all had expert experience on their side. The outcome of the Conference was a resolution to establish a strong Advisory Committee on Civil Aviation. We may conclude, therefore, that the great majority of the jexpert opinion at the Conference—really the great majority of expert opinion in England on aviation—was in favour of civil aviation, as having reached a reasonable level of reliability with fair prospects of commercial success. This probably accounts for the

organisation of the big Imperial project by the Vickers people and others, announced yesterday in our cable columns, to which we have alluded above.

But tile agreement of the Conferenco to establish the Advisory Committee aforesaid is not a final decision, but a compromise which is a postponement of decision. For the main duty of that committee is, as was promptly pointed out, the duty of research in both branches of aviation. The resolution was considerably influenced by evidence of scientific men—among others the Director of the National Physical Laboratory—that experimental work is at present defective, because it does not always recognise that model experiments are unreliable, and that nothing less than full-scale experiments can be depended upon in certain cases. This authority startled the Conference with the statement that in the case of R3B. lost at Hull, this was known, and that tile experts who perished in that disaster were, aware of the gap between model and scale work, and had wanted to use the latter before final delivery of the airship to the American Government. The statement, in fact, amounted to this, nothing lees, that the disas*ter might have been prevented. The conclusion the Conference came to was that remnants of the Air Fleet should be used for the full-scale experiments demanded by many aviators, and among them the very men who had perished at Hull through lack of such experiment. “Knowledge,” he said, “derived from experiments in the air tunnels would have enabled the collapse of the" airship to be foreseen.” It was further considered by that Conference that research is of two kinds —• pure research, which is for knowledge, and applied research, which is for its application: The Advisory Committee may he expected to see that research is conducted on all these lines. Obviously this consideration applies to the Aeroplane as well as to the Airship Department. It will be fortified by the mystery of the Brooklands accident, which at present is admitted by all who have referred to it, to he inexplicable. Emphasis is given to this conclusion by the statement to the Conference of Professor Bairstow that “the scale of accidents, is still unparalleled in any other department of engineering.” The statement is surprising, for the world is under the impression that the contrary is the case But the new statement is the statement of an authority. How all this will affect the Victorian Government, which Mr Hughes is about to consider, the matter remains to be seen. For New Zealand there is no reason to hurry matters in regard- to aviation until something oomes out of the researches about tolbe directed by the new Advisory Committee of Civil Aviation. For the present, the result of the Aviation Conference is that wo know that aviation has reached well forward; that improvement is required ; that the method of discovering improvement is understood. New Zealand can afford - comfortably to wait awhile.