AUSTRALIAN FLIGHT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17079, 7 July 1926, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN FLIGHT.

COltltAM IN A SAXnSTOKU. MECHANIC BADLY WOUNDED. ALLEGED SHOOTING BY NATIVE. (Flee. To I. Copyright—United Press Assn.; (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) BASRA, July 5. Cobhain advises: “After we departed from Bagdad we were caught in a sandstorm and landed near the River Euphrates, where-' we waited for it to pass over. We flew on again, but later experienced another sandstorm, and while we were flying low over a swamp in great heat a patrol pipe in tlie cabin burst, wounding Elliot badly. We raced one hundred miles to Basra, where he has gone into the Royal Air Korea hospital. He was operated on and is doino- well. Self and machino are 0.K.” LONDON, July 6. A Bagdad, correspondent states there is tin- unconfirmed report that Elliot sustained a compound fracture of the left elbow, the result of a native bullet. ELLIOT NOT EXPECTED TO LIVE. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) (Received July 7. 11 a.m.) BAGDAD, July 6. Mr. Alan Cobharn is abandoning .his flight. Elliot is not expected to live. A GREAT FLIGHT. In congratulating Mr. Alan Cobharn on his groat flight from London to Capetown and hack, we may allow ourselves some patriotic pridet that one more of the historic achievements of aviation lias been accomplished by a British pilot, a British aeroplane, and a British engine. Thc( bare statistics of what lie has clone are startling. He lias flown move than 16,000 miles. He came from the Cape to Cairo in nine and a half days. Tic left Capetown on February 26, lie landed at, Croydon on March 13. His actual flying time in this return journey was some eighty hours for 8000 miles—about, 100 miles an hour. After some delay in crossing the Mediterranean owing to a slight, accident, and had weather, lie came from Athens in two days, making 840 miles the first, 920 miles (he second. Such tusprinfc home is proof enough that both pilot and machine had stood their long and arduous journey well. Though Mr. Cobharn was not the first to fly the whole length of Africa, and was not using an untried route—for Sir P. Van Ryneveld and Sir G. J. Quint in Brand flew to the Cape in 1920—his was pioneer work of the first importance. In 1929 a, second machine had to he employed to finish the southern journey. Mr. Cobham in 1926 has proved that one-machine and one engine can do the round trip. Though there have been single flights, conspicuous among them Sir John Alcock’s across the Atlantic in 1919, longer than any which Mr. Cobham's plan called upon him to attempt, nothing like the prolonged effort, day in day out. of his homeward journey has been seen before. His confidence in himself and his aeroplane was well justified. We aro not prepared to accept his own modest depreciation of the dangers and difficulties of African flying. It is clear enough that sandstorms in which a pilot of his experience can lose his way, and deluges which so drench aerodromes that a. pilot of his ski,!l finds difficulty in ‘Taking-off,” are serious obstacles to the development of transport by air. There remains the fact that in weather conditions which ware very far from favorable Mr. Cobhain flew from the Cape to London in 80 hours with no serious misadventure of any kind. We incline to pronounce this the most impressive proof of the powers of the modern aeroplane which has yet- boon furnished. It is obvious that" the commercial future oi flying is a question of reliability. Mr. Cobharn has declared that what he has dona other pilots can do to-morrow ,■ “(lie main things necessary are organisation and tenacity.” Tenacity is not a quality in which the British race is commonly supposed to be deficient. Organisation should not be lacking for the development of a highway of the air which inav be of tlie first importance to our Empire and the world.