A HERO OF THE AIR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16663, 7 April 1916, Page 96

A HERO OF THE AIR

LIEUTENANT A. DE B. BRANDON.

By his daring and effective attack on the Zeppelin raider, Lieutenant A. de B. Brandon, the New Zealander, has eclipsed the famous exploit of, the late gallant Lieutenant Warneford, w'ho was the first airman to accomplish the' destruction of a Zeppelin. Warneford's attack was delivered in the daytime, Brandon's ait night, at a much greater altitude, and under much more dangerous conditions. Sub-lieutenant Brcindon is a son of Mr A; de B. Brandon, of Wellington. He is 32 years of age, and went Home last year for the purpose of entering the Aviation Corps. He attended the Flying School at Hendonj and the Military School at Harrow, and received his commission in the Royal Flying Corps later. He is a Wellington College boy, and later attended Cambridge University. Before the war he was a member of the legal firm of Brandon, Hislop, and Brandon. In the course of the last letter to his father Lieutenant Brandon stated that he had just obtained his commission, and was waiting for it to be, gazetted. He was then at the Military Aviation School at Harrow, where he had been engaged in flying experiments with a new model of an aeroplane, known as the " Avro" machine. , As is well known, the aeroplane (biplane and monoplane) has been at a disadvantage as compared with the " Zeppelin" airship, owing to the fact that these great " clippers of the clouds" could rise .or fall practically vertically, whilst the aeroplane has to mount m spiral circles. The advantage of the " Avro" type of aeroplanes is that, though still a thing of planes, it can ascend in shorter circles, and therefore much quicker than other types of British machines. The " Avro" can climb vertically at the rate of between 50 and 60 miles an hour, and has a speed of 70 miles an hour when flying horizontally. It is this type of aeroplane that Lieutenant Brandon had been jjiven the opportunity of experimenting with, which points to the probability that it was in one of these new machines that he made his sensational attack on the Zeppelin. A number of members of_ the legal profession in Wellington sent a cablegram to Flight Sub-lieutenant A. de B. Brandon congratulating him upon having surmounted and bombed a Zeppelin.