AERIAL INDIFFERENCE,

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20614, 15 May 1935, Page 6

AERIAL INDIFFERENCE,

' I ''HE Navy Board of Australia may not escape censure for its refusal to supply Kingsford Smith with a navigator for Tasman flight. It is inconceivable that such a hold-up could occur in the United States, where national airmindedness would insist on the cooperation of the navy in any pioneering flight of this nature. In fait, it is easy to imagine American navigators queueing up for the opportunity of making such a flight. It would be reasonable for the Navy Board to withhold its assistance for purely commercial ventures like this only if they had no strategic value or significance, or if the Air Force, co-operating with the Navy, as in the case of the American armada in the Pacific to-day, had covered these routes adequately. Kingsford Smith’s projected flight of two machines in company had a strategic value over a route not attempted by any Air Force or naval aircraft, and therefore the occasion seemed to demand the fullest official co-operation possible. Certainly the public will await a fuller explanation of the Navy Board’s action, which seems, in a large measure, to have jeopardised an interesting flying venture.