IN A HANDLEY-PAGE.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 February 1919, Page 7

IN A HANDLEY-PAGE.

A TR{P OVER LONDON. THE "BUS" THAT CABBIES 12. The following description of a trip in one of the famous Handley Page aeroplanes is extracted from an article by Mr H. Campbell Jones, of the Sydney Sun, who visited England with the Imperial Press Delegation:— ■Prophets declare the Handley Page bombing machine to be the procursor of the giant passenger machine of the near future. The mammoth biplanes are the product of a man who never knew anything about practical aviation before the war, but who has since revolutionised aerial warfare with his superDreadnought bombers. Handley Page is a young engineer with the keen, eager face of tbe creative zealot, and his gift to the great cause has been the finest bombing machine in existence. It is fully 100 feet from tip to tip of its immense wingß. It has two enormous propellers, or rather tractors. The great "'bus" weighs close upon three and a half tons, and is capable of carrying three tons of bombs, which, properly dropped, would knock the stuffing out of Berlin.

The oversea journalists were taken up in 'buses nine at a time. One sat in the observer's forward cabin, an eagle's oerie which jut 3 out into space, two were pressed into the pilot's boy, which is crammed with mechanical apparatus, and five others found standing room in a kind of well at the back, or fuselage, behind the wings. When experienced airmen travel in the 'bus—they come daily from France—twelve are carried without trouble.

The mammoth 'bus ran far up the field to the gentle rise before it reluctantly left the earth with the two propellers roaring with Bull of Bashan din. The first sensation is the soft swaying of a good sailing ship in a stiff breeze, with the sails straining at the cleats and the stays whistling. For the 'bus breasting a half' gale at 80 miles an hour makes you think that you have entered the cave of all the winds.

Talking is out of the question. You can only converse by signs, and you mint keep your face fair into the wind, otherwise the wind-pressure will force one of your nostrils in and cut down your breathing space by. half. If yon ever saw the Christmas pantomime of "Sinbad the Sailor" you commence to appreciate the feelings of the hero when he clung to the claw of a roc. Down below the landscape rushes behind, but the machine itself, appears stationary. One of the illusions of the air is that you are doing 00 miles or 130 miles an hour and yet are not moving. Stealing out beyond the pilot is a Lewis machinegun, which can pour out 600 bullets a minute. On a stage behind the well is a pivoted gun, which can sweep the whole, horizon. Genius has discovered a method of synchronisation which enables the Lewis gnn to spit lead through the two propeller blades, though they are revolving at a speed which makes them a blur to the eye..

It is the pilot's job to work the machine and to fight the Lewis gun poky ing straight ahead.

It is the, observer's duty to chart the course by land maps and stars and to' fight Ihc rear gun, which can be aimed in any direction.

The great 'bus nosed its way to two thousand feet, and droned violently across London and its environs, withoutanyone recognising landmarks until they were pointed out by the pilot. People in the streets were insignificant dots, houses no larger than the toys of childhood, trees became tiny shrubs, cattle and horses smaller than those in the nursery Noah's Ark. Trains and railway trucks dwindled absurdly. A long goods train appeared to be about an inch wide and 20 inches long. Try to drop a marble from the top of a two-storey house on a pebble which you can just see, and you have some slight conception of the superb markmanship demanded of «.n aerial bomber.

The wonder ia that he ever hits anything. It must of necessity take tops upon tons of explosives to reach any chosen target. The 'bus is a cab horse compared to the swal!ow-lilce scout or chaser, but 80 miles an hour is still some speed, and when the pilot next me obviously had difficulty in keeping the monster Btraight, and we fell sharply as if to joust at a terrace of houses, the pace suggested a fragmentary end. However, the man prevailed, and with a series of soft bumps we descended upon our field.

"I was 'afraid I had lost control," tho pilot said comfortingly as he screwed out of his Beat and made a bee-line for a drink.

'Buses have bad habits, especially if they hit a pocket of air. The smaller, swifter machines bridge the void with their momentum. The slower Goliath may drop like a jrull when it spots food on the surface of the sea.