PIONEER OF AVIATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23946, 23 October 1939, Page 10

PIONEER OF AVIATION

AIR TRIP ROUND THE WORLD LICENSED PILOT AT SEVENTY (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY. Oct, 4. Sydney has had a fleeting visit from a pioneer of aviation—a man who was a contemporary of Bleriot and Latham and who now, at the age of 70 years, is fulfilling an ambition to fly round the world. He is Mr Arthur Batchelor, who. despite his three-score years and ten, still holds a pilot’s licence. He built and flew his own monoplane in 1910. Until recently he owned four aeroplanes, but he has handed them over to the British Government for training purposes. : J . Mr Batchelor arrived in Sydney by a 200-miles-an-hout Dutch airliner ffora Batavia, after crossing the South Pacific from San Francisco to Manila by way of Honolulu. Wake, Midway, and Guam Islands. Alighting from the speedy Dutch aircraft, he recalled thai his 1910 aeroplane achieved the then amazing speed of 40 miles an hour. “ I built it,’’ he said. “ with ash braced with piano wire, and it was considered to be an engineering marvel at the time. I can thoroughly recommend flying to any young man —the air is Cl Mr‘ Batchelor said that he knew Bleriot when he made his flight over the English Channel in 1909. thus winning the Daily Mail prize of £IO,OOO for the first man to link France and England by air He also knew Latham, Bleriot’s rival. He dreamed then that it might some day be possible to fly round the world, but he admitted that he did not foresee that airliners would cruise at more than 200 miles an hour. _ . Mr Batchelor’s whirlwind visit to glimpse Australia and see what is going on” lasted three days. Then he flew on—in a Dutch airliner —to Egypt.