EQUATORIAL AFRICA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17639, 1 December 1931, Page 9

EQUATORIAL AFRICA

11,000-LULL F-uaGET a:e lines of the future LONDON, Oct. 20. ! Four British day bombers which left , Gairo six days ago are now flying in I formation westwards across equatorial ; Africa, engaged in a routine service cruise of more than 11.001). miles over -e ions, great tracts of which even to- ' clay are remote and little known. Not ; many years ago white men had scarcely i penetrated, with iniiinite toil and fre- ! orient peril, to many of the places over ; which the British -planes will fly and the names of the halting places—Niamey, Bamako, Tamale, Ouagadougou, Tmnbncounda and the rest—still sound i strangely, their music retaining some- : thing of the glamor that drew explorers i from many lands.

The route planned for the Royal Air Force’s West African cruise tins year is more extensive than ever before. The total mileage to be flown has grown by 4000 miles above the distance entered last year and many more towns are being visited. Again this yean the westernmost. point of the cruise will h« Bathurst, capital of the Gambia, and on the way there the aeroplanes will call at Accra, in the Gold Coast, and Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, the forerunners maybe of air liners which soon will link regularly the chief cities of Hie immense regions under French or British control in West Africa. , Altogether the fleet will he absent from its headquarters at Cairo till nearly the middle of December, flying mostdays distances up to 700 miles, hut staying a while here and there to look over machines and engines and to allow time to study flying conditions along Hie way with the idea of getting data ior future development. To-day the fleet is travelling from El Pusher,- in Angio-Jngyptiau npittn, to Gcneina, and to-morrow evening they will reach Fort Larny, an important town in the French-controlled Chad colony. Thence the aeroplanes will fly across Nigeria and the Upper Volta region to Ashanti and the Gold Coast, hack inland to Bamako in the French Sudan and on over French Guinea to Sierra Leone and Bathurst, where they, are timed to arrive on November 18. Four days later the return journey will be begun, taking the flyers over much territory traversed on the outward flight, and ending at Heliopolis aerodrome aerodrome, Cairo, on December 11.

Squadron-Leader F. .T. Vincent, commanding No. 45 (Bomber) Squadron, leads the flight. Tie is accompanied bv two commissioned pilots and five sergeants. “CLOG a WORK” FLY IXG The aeroplanes are fast Faircy biplanes, each powered withe a single 550 h.p. Napier water-pooled motor and exactly similar to the era t which have made most of the famous ‘Royal Air Force long distance cruises over Africa during the last lew years. For foiuconsecutive years Fairov aircraft performed the annual formation cruise front Cairo to Capetown and the precision of their travels through the length of Africa, always arriving to predetermined times, in ve done much to make almost proverbial the clockwork regularity of a Royal Air Force flight. Lust year, and in 1928, Fairey machines also accomplished the routine flight between Egypt and West Africa.

These service cruises have undoubtedly played a predominant -part in the development of trans-African aviation. Inevitably air lines through much of equatorial Africa will follow cruises of the kind now in progress, just as a commercial air line from north to the south of the continent is to-day taking shape along the route flown over many times by R..A.F. pioneers.