AVIATION PROGRESS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18590, 28 December 1934, Page 6

AVIATION PROGRESS

FAR-REACHING PLANS

BRITAIN’S DEFENCE RING

LONDON, Dec. 8

Several developments of, first importance affecting the progress of civil and military aviation are now under consideration.

With the object of completing Britain’s new air defence ring, the Air Ministry is negotiating for two more aerodrome sites tit. Tern Hall and Harwell, south of Oxford, each of 500 acres, thus bringing the total up to seven. The largest, of them A Thorney Island,, near Portsmouth, where 1300 acres are in course of preparation. When it is finished, this huge aerodrome, which is of great strategic importance, will accommodate several squadrons of the fleet, air arm, and many land machines working in conjunction with aircraft carriers. The scheme tor a defensive air ring envisages 11 new aerodromes, the sites of the remaining four of which have yet to be decided.

On the civil side, a five-year plan, to include the operation of an Atlantic air route, the doubling of the present Empire services, and big increases in Government financial support, lias been unofficially approved by the Cabinet and Air Ministry experts. If adopted, this plan will place Britain in the forefront of commercial aviation.

Next spring, Pan American Airways, operating in conjunction with Imperial Airways, will open the United States to Bermudas stage of an Atlantic air service, which will he the preliminary to a complete and regular trans-Atlantic traffic.

Another ambitious scheme receiving serious consideration by Britain, France, Germany and Italy, in collaboration, is a round-the-world airway, involving floating aerodromes in the North Atlantic. The American Department of Public Works has reported that it is favorable to a project of building five of these floating platforms anchored at 450-mile intervals. Each would be 1500 ft. long, and 300 ft. wide, with a crow of 43, and would be supported on 32 telescopic pillars, whose bases would be '2looft. below the surface.

Some experts declare that such seadromes, which would necessarily be very costly, will be uncalled for if the technical progress of aeroplane construction continues on present standards. Their view is that machines capable of crossing the Atlantic in a single hop, with perfect safety, will be produced as a matter of course within the next few years.