STORY OF HER FLIGHT

Taranaki Daily News, 26 July 1934, Page 3

STORY OF HER FLIGHT

MISS BATTEN AT OPERA HOUSE.

TRIUMPH OF FINAL SUCCESS. Miss Jean Batten told her own story of the record-breaking flight from London to Darwin to large audiences at the Opera House, New Plymouth, yesterday afternoon and last night. Introduced by the Mayor, Mr. E. R. C. Gilmour, she was on both occasions enthusiastically received and impressed her audience by the charm of her manner and the simple, straightforward way in which she recounted the bitterness of her first failures and the triumph of her final success.

Her first attempt, she recalled, had ended with near-disaster when the engine of her machine fell to pieces near Karachi after she had made a fast flight from London. The dramatic incident of her landing on a 20-foot wide road, with the wings of a 30-foot span, lost nothing of its intensity because she recounted it calmly as a mere incident in a narrative of adventure over half the world. The second flight ended at Rome when, on a pitch black night, she ran out of petrol over the city and landed between tall wireless masts on the field of a radio station, having disregarded the advice of French weather experts when leaving Marseilles. “The first failure was no fault of my own,” she said. “The second was. I thought I knew more about the weather than the French experts. I know of no more dreadful feeling than that which I experienced when I found myself without fuel over a strange city at midnight.” Her account of the final and successful attempt was not without its hint of dramatic force, backed by small touches of local colour which showed her keen observation and interest in the strange lands and relics of forgotten civilisation over which she passed. Her description of the monsoon fury which struck her frail plane after leaving Rangoon on the' second last stage of thq . flight was graphic almost to the point of excitement. None could fail to respond to the account she gave of her decision to fly through rather than turn, back and meet failure a third time. Mere recital of the narrative as she told it is inadequate. Miss Batten’s lecture is one which should be heard to be appreciated. Patrons of the Opera House yesterday, in addition to hearing a first-hand description of one of aviation’s major adventures in recent years were also entertained by an excellent picture programme. The short feature, “Contact,” an educational film sponsored and produced by Imperial Airways is excellent in particular, covering as it does the actual scenery of the airways route from London to Bagdad and from Capetown to London. The photography, particularly of the Greek and Babylonian ruins and the dense jungle-clad plains of Central Africa, is unique in its evident authenticity and delightful composition. The’entire feature is novel both in conception and production and the film is one thoroughly worth while seeing for. itself alone.

The featured production, “Above the Clouds,” starring Robert Armstrong and Dorothy Wilson, is that type of action picture which thrills both young and old. Typically American, it is none the less excellent and at times spectacular entertainment) particularly where formation flying by United States Army air squadrons is shown. Dorothy Wilson is •not as well known in exported American pictures as she deserves to be. Her playing of the stenographer-heroine of “Behind the Clouds” is charming.