FLYING ACROSS AFRICA

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18940, 10 December 1929, Page 13

FLYING ACROSS AFRICA

Opportunities For Aerial Transport (Written for the “ Star ” by LADY HEATH.)

This great continent of Africa is to my mind one of the most interesting in the world, because it is the least explored of any. There is less known about the centre of the country and there are more untouched areas than anywhere else, except in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. After a number of people have walked over any route, the pathway can be routed for other forms of travel. The motor-car follows; later perhaps an allweather road or railway is made; and eventually that most rapid form of transport, the aeroplane, can go along that line. At present there is no Cape-to-Cairo railway, and there is no Cape-to-Cairo all-weather road; but, with some difficulties attending it, there can be an air-line from the Cape to Cairo. No doubt it will have to be an expensive line at first, because petrol is very expensive in Central Africa. You have to pay about six shillings a gallon for it if you buy it. But if this air-line were actually in existence you could get from London to Cape Town in eight days, flying in relays day and night. When I decided some years ago that it would be possible to fly through Africa, I made some preliminary preparations for my journey by visiting the country five times and going over practically the whole route by differ ent methods of transport—by railway, motor-car. boat, and on foot. I decided then that there were certain parts of the country, especially the forest belt in the centre, over which it is not advisable for any aviator to travel alone. There are no roads through that forest belt, because of the swamps in it; and there are no telegraphic facilities by which an aviator can wire himself out to the next aerodrome. There is a line between two points, but that line is usu ally down owing to giraffes walking through or natives stealing the wire. On the other side of Tanganyika there is no line whatever. If you want to send a message you must use native runners. Difficulties of the Flight.

When I was making preliminary arrangements for the first flight ever made from the overseas dominions to Great Britain, I tried to get somebody to escort me over this jungle area, and I was fortunate in getting Lieutenant Bentley, who, when he came to this forest belt, with his charming little newly-married wife, decided to go right on to England; and so two flights grew out of one. I found that making the arrangements for a flight from the overseas dominions to England was terribly difficult. I could not lay down any supplies, and consequently had to rely on a really good engine to take me through my journey. T cotild take no spares, so I had to give the engine a tremendous amount of work. I put in very nearly as much work on the engine as in actual flying. To learn to do this, when in South Africa I was permitted to join various light-aeroplane clubs there. I was allotted to do or dinary routine work on air engines so as to get practice and to be able when necessary to do it myself when flying Nor could I lay down any petrol supplies. I had to buy motor fuel as I went along, and in the centre of Africa

it costs, as I said, about six shillings a gallon. Maps, too, ■were a very great difficulty. There was only one set of maps in the country, those belonging to Lieutenant Bentley. He very kindly hired these to me, but when he decided to go back he took them again—and then lost them. So that through most of this country I had to fly on pages torn out of an atlas and on tracks I made from local maps, and I°n such road maps as are issued in Africa by the Automobile Association, showing little the contours and main roads, which, except in Uganda are not very good. The roads in Uganda are the best in the whole of the continent. They are perfectly kept and are marvellous landmarks when one is flying over the country. It is not so difficult as it sounds to fly on the pages torn out of an atlas, because visibility all over Africa is so good. You can always see from eighty to a hundred miles on a clear day from a decent height. One flies as high as possible to get out of the hot layer of air from the earth, as well as making for safety, so that if your engine fails you can go down safely. But where one can see such immense distances there is always some great natural landmark to guide you—the coastline, a lake as large as England, the Kilimanjaro Mountain, which is larger than Vesuvius—so that you can go a long way without ever looking at a map. This makes navigation very easy in Africa. In England the distances are so short that railwaj's and roads make transport nearly as quick by them as ky air, but in the great continent of Africa the railways and roads are only in embryo, and it is in this country, where flying is so easy from a navigation point of view, that aviation can really come into its own. Development of Empire Aviation. But Empire aviation cannot develop by itself, it wants help. The French are able to give millions of money to develop their colonial air-line, and so are the Belgians in the Belgium Congo. What are we English doing? There is an air-line being started ,in South Africa which is being subsidised by the South African Government; but it is getting nothing from the Imperial Government. The various territories concerned proposed an air-line from Kartoum to Kenya, and are obtaining money from their three Governments—the Soudan, Uganda, and British East Africa, and possibly also Tanganyika. But they have not received any promise of help from the Imperial Government, The only thing the Imperial Government is doing is to subsidise a small branch of the Imperial Airways iLine running from Cairo towards the East, which it is hoped eventually to extend to Karachi.

To my mind it is a great triumph of British machines and engines that a little machine weighing only 9001 b and a little engine of only from 30 to 80 b.p. should carry a woman like xrte by air and get me through this great continent without a tremor or a fault as to machine or engine during the whole of

the journey. But not only I myself had to be taken, I had to take eight frocks with me; I also took a tennis racquet and plenty of books, because I did not want to do the flight in record-break-ing time. I dearly love journeying by air, and I wanted to stay as long as possible and to learn as much as I could about the marvellous country, through which I was flying and which one can see from a new angle when in the air. So I spent three full months over the journey, and I can only describe it as a series of parties on the ground interrupted by flights; because the hospitality one gets everywhere is simply wonderful. In England, especially where there are big towns the aerodromes are a long way outside them, and of necessity you can see little of them from an aeroplane, because you have to fly so high above the cities that if there is any engine failure you can glide down to the country outside them. So we are not as enthusiastic as we might be about aviation in our cities or indeed in the whole of England, as people are all over the colonies and the dominions, where there is tremendous enthusiasm for this method of transport.

Any great national movement such as aviation cannot progress unless the whole country joins forces in order to help it. (Anglo-American N.S. Copright.)