New Airliners For The Atlantic

Southland Times, Issue 23652, 29 October 1938, Page 13

New Airliners For The Atlantic

By

M. H. Halton

YOU have dinner in New York and at 10 o’clock you step into an aeroplane. As dawn is breaking you rise from' your sleeping berth to find the plane roaring into a place called Botwood in Newfoundland. You change from the land plane into a 40-ton flying-boat carrying 40 passengers and mails, a machine that has a cruising speed of 200 miles an hour and a range of 4000 miles. At 4 o’clock the same day you settle down on the waters of the Shannon airport at Rynanna, Ireland; take off again in half an hour; come down in Southampton Water two hours later. At half

past eight you are having dinner in London, and you have done 1000 leagues in a day. When? “Two years from now,” said Imperial Airways. “Perhaps earlier. Last year our two flying-boats, Cambria and Caledonia, made five round trips across the Atlantic with perfect ease ’ and safety. This year we will have

more tests, trying out the Mayo composite craft, flie Albatross land plane, and the new and bigger flying-boats. Next year we may be able, with PanAmerican Airways, to establish the first regular m,ail and passenger service. But let us say 1940 to be sure.” In 1940, if I have £l2O or £125 to spare for the one-way passage, I’ll be able to fly from London to my home in Alberta in a day and a-half. In 1945 I’ll be able to go from Piccadilly Circus in London to New York’s £400,000 aerodrome in 12 hours. In 1950—but just a minute. These prophecies about the conquest of the air have a way of falling short & the realities by about 10 years. Is it a fact that two years from now there will be a regular air service across the north Atlantic?

It looks like a fact this time. Even the more cautious half of the AngloAmerican partnership, Imperial Airways, told me it would definitely come in two years and that mails might be carried for the first time in 1939. PanAmerican Airways are reported to be ready right now. They are reported to be asking London what all the holdup is about. London reports that the Americans are only ready on paper. The Americans are building a fleet of 30-tqn flying-boats at Seattle. Imperial "Airways are building their new flyingboats, 26 tons, at Rochester, England.

The two companies will make their tests this year and next And next year probably, for the first time in history, mails will cross the Atlantic in a day. It is reported that Pan-American Airways has asked aircraft constructtors to produce 125-ton land planes capable of carrying 100 passengers 3000 miles non-stop at a speed of 300 miles an hour and an altitude of 25,000 feet. Colonel Lindbergh said in Dublin recently that such machines were the planes of the future. In London, however, they say it will take years to develop aviation motors- powerful enough to drive such an aeroplane. In any case, it is safe to say that the first .machines to carry passengers across the north Atlantic will be British and American flying-boats weighing. 26 and 30 tons. The Test Flights The flying-boats that made history in the test flights from Foynes, Ireland, to Botwood, Newfoundland, last year had a weight of 18 tons. “What’s the matter with ships like that for

carrying passengers and mails?” I asked. “Not big enough,” said Imperial Airways. “All the available'space was taken up with fuel.” “What was the purpose of the flights, then?” “To test weather conditions, that’s all. Those weather conditions, for the summer months, are now partly charted. When we get bigger flying-boats the regular service will start.” The Caledonia left Foynes on the first of the test flights at eight o’clock in the evening of July 5,1937. The journey took 15 hours eight minutes. Going back to the old world a few days later Captain Wilcockson took his ship the 1900 miles over the great circle course in 12 hours 15 minutes. The sister ship, Cambria, flew from Newfoundland to Ireland last September in 10 hours 36 minutes. It is no wonder that British air experts are considering building air bombers in Canada and flying them to England if war comes and British factories are destroyed. It is no wonder that the airway companies have already received applications from people who wish to be the first passengers ever to fly the Atlantic in a regular service in heavier-than-air machines. But there are many problems to be overcome first, some of them strange problems indeed, as I found when I visited Imperial Airways in London. “The fuel load is the biggest,” they

told me. “Another is the dead area around Newfoundland.” The dead area around Newfoundland. It was found in the test flights that the radio signal beams behave curiously for 500 miles around the Newfoundland coast. The radio beam ray that brings aircraft safely into port through fogs and storms doesn’t function in that area. At least, it functions eccentrically. Why? They don’t know. “Questions like that have answered,” said Imperial Airways, before a regular service can become sure and foolproof. Then there are the winter problems. It would be a rash prophet who would predict an allweather year-around north Atlantic service by 1940, or even 1941.” But the biggest problem is the fuel load, and developing engines powerful enough to propel the giant craft of tomorrow. If there was a half-way house in the middle of the Atlantic there could be a regular service tomorrow with planes like the Cambria and Caledonia, because they could carry passengers and mails where they now carry fuel. There is no such half-way house. That is why the craft of the future must be bigger. .That is why

Imperial Airways will try out this summer a 26-ton flying-boat with four 1500-horsepower engines. Imperial Airways are building 11 of those boats. This summer, probably next month, there will be trans-Atlantic experiments with three new types of English aircraft: the Mayo composite plane, the Albatross land plane and the new 26ton flying-boat. Mayo Composite Plane You have seen photographs of a giant English flying-boat flying through the air with another flying-boat on its back. That -is the Mayo composite plane. The mother plane is called the Maia, the baby is the Mercury, though it weighs 18 tons and isn’t such a baby. It’s just like the Cambria and Caledonia, in fact. The idea is that by being carried aloft on its mother’s power it can carry a bigger load, a load of passengers and mail as well as fuel Some people call this idea a brilliant freak. “If the v mother can get the baby into the air,” they say, “why not use the mother for the long flights?” I have seen no answer to this query; and if there is no answer, then the famous Mayo composite craft is the most quixotic and useless experiment eVer devised by human ingenuity.

Then there is the Albatross land plane, a beautiful machine, built by the British Air Ministry; Imperial Airways has ordered five Albatrosses for its empire and continental services. It is thought that the Albatross can carry 15 passengers and a ton of mail on a non-stop flight of 2500 miles at a cruising speed of a good 200 miles an hour. It seems certain that aviation has nearly conquered the Atlantic; and some of the big shipping companies are said to be a little anxious about it. Certain newspapers in England ask why the Government should be subsidizing the building of more giant ocean liners when in the near future most first-class

passengers will travel by air. In the 30 years since the Mauretania was built ocean liners have cut only one day oft the Atlantic crossing. Air liners will cut off four days. Five years, from now, it seems, the luxurious first-class salons and pleasure rooms in the Queen Mary and the Normandie will be emptied, or turned over to poorer passengers .who still can’t afford the air. Aviators themselves say that we are only really entering the air age. “The next 10 years will speed up the world as it hasn’t speeded up since the discovery of the steam engine,” said Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, who with Al-

cock was the first man to fly the Atlantic. “By 1950,” said LieutenantColonel J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, M.P., the first Englishman to fly an aeroplane, “we will travel around the world in a few days as comfortably as we now go in the same number of weeks.” “I would as soon fly the Atlantic as do the run from New York to Miami,” said Dick Merrill. At a place called Rynanna in Ireland there is no doubt about the coming of the air age. At Rynanna on the Shannon, just 10 miles from Foynes which is the temporary trans-Atlantic terminal, the Irish Government is building a £750,000 airport. That is a lot of money for the Irish taxpayer, but it will be worth while a few years from now when Rynna will mean Europe and Botwood will mean America, two points at the end of the shortest and most popular line between the old world and the new. Not quite the shortest. The shortest route from San Francisco to Moscow is over the north edge of Greenland. The shortest line from London to Tokyo is across northern Siberia. The first of these at least will never be used commercially. Where air liners can go in 15 hours, air bombers can go in 10. That is another thought for the day when the air age really begins.