AN EMPIRE ON THE WING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3842, 4 December 1936, Page 3

AN EMPIRE ON THE WING

THE INSIDE STORY OF IMPERIAL AIRWAYS.

People opened their papers the other morning to read a remarkable re/port of Empire air progress—of more mails air-borne, of more passengers carried, of more miles flown, says Sir Samuel Instone, a Director of Imperial Airways. They read that'the air route mileage of the British Commonwealth of Nations has now risen till it is higher than that of the United States. And they went bn to read other figures which confound those critics who have belittled our British policy of steady, concentrated air progress, and who have been far too ready with their indiscriminate applause of everything of a spectacular nature which has been achieved elsewhere. Behind all these facts and figures there is one of the. great romances of modern enterprise. Our British airmail system is unique in the world’s history. Nothing like it has ever been seem before. At every hour of the twenty-four, somewhere along thousands of miles of routes, our big land-planes or fly-ing-boats wing their way. The air-mail is an organisation which never rests or sleeps. Up from the great provincial cities of Britain come mail loads intended for destinationsin Egypt. India, Africa, China, or Australia. Expert sorters deal with them in the ever-growing air-mail department at the General Post office. Fast mail vans rush them down to the London air-port. Into the holds of our big air-liners they are stowed by quick-working officials. It is a romance in itself to hear the names called out of cities thousands of miler; distant, to which these airmail? are to be flown in swift, accu-rately-timed relays. Calcutta! Bombay! Singapore! Hong Kong! And even for 13,000 miles to the great, far distant cities of Australia! Giant land-planes bear these mails across the Channel. Big flying-boats carry them above the. Mediterranean. Other land-planes are waiting in relays to fly southward from Egypt, across Africa, and eastward Jo India, China and Australia. It is a fascinating organisation, on the ground as well as up in the air, which enables our aerial postmen to fly over seas, forests, mountains and desorts, in bad weather as well as in fine, with a reliability of just on 100 per cent. . A mechanical dependability is ensured by our fleet of multi-engine ! ait-liners, maintained and overhauled by eSpert engineers. And the crews of these big machines know their flying routes like the taxi-driver knows the streets of the big cities. Eight of our veteran British air captains have between them now ■'* flown a total distance approaching ten million miles, and eight of our big air-liners flying day in and day out, have, since they came into service, flown more than five million miles. Last year we carried more than 17 million letters by air. It is a romance of fact as well as of figures. Let me give you an instances Along what used to be called the “The Pirate Cbast’’—that is to say, the Arabian side of the Persian

Gulf—our mail-planes fly on the route to India and the East. But that coast no longer has the bad reputation of olden days. The Sheikhs have signed treaties abolishing piracy and slave-running. At Sharjah, on a remote part of this pirate coast, a rest-house, .which passengers say reminds them of one of those romantic desert stations you see on the films—or read about in novels—has been erected. Well protected is that desert situation against possible marauding bands while the Sheikh of Sharjah provides armed guards and does all in his power to help our officials. Passengers who spend the night at this station, and who watch the camel caravans stealing by in the dusk, find that they have at their service on this desolate coast amenities they would expect in any West End hotel.

And that is just one of the many marvels of the Empire air-mail. Aerodromes were hacked out of forests to make it possible to run the great route across Africa. A wonderful organisation of wireless and of meteorology has been created. Refuelling depots have had to be installed at points far from the nearest centres of supply. Extremes of climate have had to be encountered and overcome. At one point along our Empire route the heat may be so great that it is breaking the bulbs of therometers, and at another point our airmen may be flying through snowstorms. But the motto is everywhere the same: “The mails must go through!” In the early days of air transport, 17 years ago, the pilots had none of the wonderful organisation which is constantly at their service to-day. There was no wireless communication between ground stations and aircraft in flight. To-day there is a great network of wireless and meteorology which extends not only across Europe, but far out over the Empire*. The wireless telephone and telegraph provide never-failing links between the airman up aloft and ground stations. Hu can ask the nearest station for a weather report, and learn exactly what the conditions are' like on the sections of his route ahead. He can tune in to wireless stations and by means of a “homing” device which he has in his machine can be g-uided infallibly towards that station. And when it comes to landing, he has a wonderful system of ground lighting and other- aids, including wireless rays, to guide him to the ground when he is confronted by fog. It seems a far cry to those days, just after the war, when bombingplanes were being converted into passenger-carriers, and every flight was such an adventure that one pilot took threel days to make the 250mile air journey from London to Paris. It was in August, 1919, that Britain began the world’s first daily air express between London and Paris. Three months later the Post Office made a contract for the carriage of mails by air on Continental routes. That opened up a great phase of expansion which sees us to-day building a fleet of Empire flying-boats in which next year letter mails will be carried by air from London to distant parts of the Empire free of any special aerial surcharge. The passengers who flew in the

early days and make a flight in an air-liner to-day can hardly believe that so much progress has been made in a comparatively short period of years. Our new flying-boats will provide comfortable sleeping as well as day accommodation. This will mean that, instead of spending the night in an hotel or rest-house on the ground, long-dis-tance passengers will be able to eat, sleep and live in them just as they would in a liner or in a long-dis-tance train. The time schedule would, be arranged on a 24-hour basis, and a flight, say, from England to Australia, would be reduced to not more than a week. Alternatively, if they wish to do so, they will be able to break their journey at places of interest or where desired for business purposes, more rapid than enthusiasts expected Flying progress has. been even in the early days. That great pioneer, Louis Bleriot, whose death we were mourning only the other day, was discussing after he flew the Channel what ha foresaw would be thel developments of air traffic in the years to come. He pictured passenger planes far larger than his tiny craft which would in due course wing their way to and fro across Britain and France. But even he did not contemplate that, within a quarter of a century of that history-making flight of his, there would be 50 or 60 air-liners passing daily between London and the Continent. Yet such is actually the case. Our next big development will be the aerial conquest of the North Atlantic from a commercial point of view, and the establishment of an aerial flying ’mail which will link up with the aerial system of Canada and the United States. When mails have made their Atlantic crossing they will be airborne over the great Canadian route to the Pacific Coast. Already the Pacific is being opened up for commercial flying. All this will mean that, far sooner than many people think, it will be possible for you to send a letter completely round the globe) in a series of rapidly inter-connected flights above land and sea.