ATLANTIC FLIGHT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17239, 21 April 1930, Page 7

ATLANTIC FLIGHT

THE WESTWARD EFFORT SOUTHERN CROSS’ PROJECT (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assu.) NEW YORK, April 19. In tho course of an interview, Squad-ron-Leader Kingsford Smith stated that he would know definitely on Thursday whether he would' attempt the westward Atlantic crossing. He stated that there had been a discussion of the possible immediate purchase of his plane, but he doubted if it would materialise. He said, however, that the chances for the flight were “better now than against,” and if he decided to fly, lie would depart for England on Friday, go to Holland and bring the Southern Orbss to Ireland, where he would await favorable weather for crossing by the northern route to Roosevelt Field. He would leave there for San Francisco, thence Oakland. Ho would return to Australia to be married in September.

In July last Kingsford Smith stated in London that it was almost definite that he and Ulm would fly the Atlantic. Subsequently it was reported that Mr. F. Sjtewart, chairman/ of Australian National Airways, Ltd., had advised Smith and Ulm not to attempt the flight across the Atlantic, which would be hazardous, adding that the company was convinced that such an exploit was not needed as a test of the crew’s courage and airmanship, which were already established. Later, in an interview in Amsterdam, Kingsford Smith said they would cross the Atlantic, using the safe route from Dakar, in French West Africa, to Pernambuco, in Brazil. The Southern Cross was reconditioned at the Fokker Works in Holland last year, and Kingsford Smith, speaking in Honolulu in October, said that Ulm, Litchfield, and McWilliams, who were with him on the flight from Australia to New Zealand, and from Australia to England, would accompany him on a flight from Baldonnel, Ireland, to New York, and then to Oakland, California, in April, 1930. On March 14 a cablegram from Sydney stated that Kingsford Smith had sailed that day for the United States and England to make arrangements for the trans-Atlantic flight, and that Ulm had been refused leave by tho Australian National Airways to accompany him.

The westward flight across the Atlantic is notoriously dangerous, and although several attempts have been attended with disastrous results, it was accomplished by the German airmen, Ivoehl and von Huhonfeld, with Major Fitzmaurice, the Irish Free State airman, in the aeroplane Bremen, in April, 1928, and later in the same year by tho German airship Graf Zeppelin.