ORDERS FROM FRANCE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17498, 19 June 1931, Page 7

ORDERS FROM FRANCE

BRITISH FLYING BOATS TRIBUTE TO EFFICIENCY (British Official Wireless.> RUGBY, June 17. The French airman, Captain Castes, will this week pilot home one of the well-known Calcutta types of Hying boats constructed by Messrs. Short, ot Rochester, which tlie French Government has purchased. An agreement has been reached between Niort’s and the Brequet Co. for tlm manufacture, under license in France, of further Calcutta, boats which the French Government intend to employ in their naval services. The French air transport companies operating in the Mediterranean are also ordering Calcutta crafts.

-More than 100,000 miles flown in two years is the achievement of G-EBVG, the first Short Calcutta Hying boat delivered to imperial Airways for operation of tlie Alcditerranean sections of the air route to the East. The machine, which is to be superseded in the Mediterranean by the larger i'our-motored Kent boats, is coming otf the service for overhaul. Sho is in excellent condition and good for many more years of service, flie operational statistics show 1160 hours spent in tin? air and a distance of 104,400 miles. During the years on service the machine was never in a hangar but was anchored out day and night, subjected to extremes of temperature and widely varying weather conditions. Like all other Calcutta boats, G-EBVG is a biplane deriving power from three 600 h.p. Jupiter air-cooled radial engines. She has accomodation in a spacious saloon cabin for 15 passengers and half a ton of mails and urgent freight can he carried in a special compartment. The Royal Air Force employs similar machines, modified for service use, and last year the French Government paid a great tribute to the excellence of British Hying boat design by ordering two Calcutta boats for the equipment of the French naval air arm. French experts frankly admitted that no boats comparable with the Calcutta were built in France.