THE WILDS OF AFRICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21598, 19 March 1932, Page 12

THE WILDS OF AFRICA

BRITISH MOTORS TEST DESERTS, RAVINES. AND LOCUSTS. An extensive test of British motor vehicles is about to be made by the War Office with a view to making the mechanised army the most efficient for its size in the world (says the motoring correspondent of the Daily Express). Hitherto military motor vehicles have been tested in England oyer rough ground on Salisbury Plain, but it has now been decided that no ground can be found in the country adequately conditioned for the type of vehicle now being tried out. The experimental section of the British mechanised army is therefore to be shifted temporarily to the wilds of Africa. Starting from Egypt, a convoy of British cars for various military needs will set out oq one of the most gruelling tests to which vehicles have ever been subjected. Captain D. K. Paris, Royal Artillery, attached to the Mechanised Warfare Experimental Establishment, Farnborough, recently left for Egypt with three other officers and other ranks to conduct the test. The object is to discover the best type of vehicle to standardise for military purposes in all parts of the world. It is the task of the British Army to act .as a police force in many areas, and it is necessary that the mechanised sections should have vehicles capable of any duty. The convoy will traverse Egypt, the Sudan, and the vast territory south of Khartoum and east of Abyssinia to the borders of the Congo,. Uganda, and Kenya, and thence north along the Red Sea littoral and the Gulf of Suez, They will cover wide expanses of desert, meet many obstacles, such as sandstorms, swarms of locusts, and severe climatic changes. They will cross mountain ranges, ravines, and gorges, and negotiate stony trades.

1 For periods of a week or more the expedition will be dependent on its own supplies in the most uncivilised areas. More than three months will he spent on the test. In all, the convoy will cover afcout 10,000 miles.