AVIATION NEWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21544, 16 January 1932, Page 19

AVIATION NEWS

FUTURE OF THE FLYING BOAT AIR TRAVEL AT NINETY MILES (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 3. The airway is the only travel-way for the aged and the invalid says Sir Alfred Yarrow, the nonagenarian shipbuilder, on the completion of a 3000 miles air tour of Europe in a Westland three-engined monoplane which he had chartered from Imperial Airways. . . Piloted by Mr Gordon Obey, the British commercial pilot who has spent nearly 10,000 hours at the controls and travelled by air approximately a million miles, Sir Alfred Yarrow, in the course of 12 days, visited Paris, Lyons, Geneva, Lucerne, Zurich, Strasbourg, and Rheims. He was delighted with the experience, and is planning to make soon a considerably longer air tour into Central Europe. He talks of the superior comfort of the air way, the risks avoided of catching cdld at railway stations or in changing between boat and train, the absence of fatigue because one journeys two or three hours a day instead of 10 or 12 to cover equivalent distances, the escape from the dreadful prostration of sea-sickness. Sir Alfred considers that the only way an old man can travel without risk to his health is by air. In his opinion the aeroplane is as superior to all forms of surface transport as the railway to the stage coaches which it superseded a hundred years ago. EMPIRE DEFENCE.

Wing-commander R. M. Bayley’s bold challenge to set ideas of Imperial defence, outlined during a lecture before the Royal United Service Institution, is causing considerable interest. Basing his arguments on the performance over several years of certain types of large flying boat employed by the Royal Air Force, the lecturer put forward a powerful case for the employment of marine aircraft in important aspects of defence, even to the replacement for some duties of light cruisers by the flying machines. He quoted figures to show that the practical range of the biggest boats yet used by the R.A.F.—2100 h.p. threeengined “ Iris ” biplanes—is approximately 1000 miles when fuelled and armed for reconnaissance and 820 miles with no less than 2000 pounds of bomb load also on board. The smaller twin-engined “Southampton ” boats have an effective range varying between 400 and 600 miles according to the amount of bomb load. Much larger boats are now being built and they are certain to possess improved abilities in load carrying, and range as well as in seaworthiness and capacity for duty on the high seas. Wing-commander Bayley disposed of the popular naval view which holds that a flying boat is a vulnerable war vessel on the ground that a very few bullet holes in the hull render the craft unseaworthy. Two or three flying boats working together, each heavily armed -with machine guns, would, he thought, be a stiff proposition even for the most formidable single-seater fighters, and the flying boat ivas not likely to be incapacitated by pieces of shell from anti-aircraft guns. Plugs were provided on board for stopping smaller holes in the hull, which is also subdivided by bulkheads, and with the modern system of metal construction the quick patching of larger holes was simple.

GUARDING SEA ROUTES. • He showed that in the future the flying boat would operate with the navy in the narrow seas, along rivers and inland seas and with the army near the sea. In time of war big flying boats would safeguard water communications, locate commerce raiders, and discount “ surprise attacks at dawn ” on a fleet or a vital land objective by its ability to scout over an immense area each evening. He emphasised that the arrival of a flying boat, because of its great range and speed, reinforced not only a garrison at one particular point, but a whole area. Finally, he saw no reason why flying boats should not “ visit and search ” suspected shipping, contradicting flatly one of the Admiralty’s chief arguments against the extended use of flying boats. He pointed out that two flying boats could easily do the job, provided that water conditions were reasonably good, and reminded his listeners that the navy itself declared that eight men were sufficient to make a prize crew. The first ship caught by the two air boats could serve as a “place of safety” for crews of vessels subsequently captured.