Aviator's Film Thrill.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

Aviator's Film Thrill.

Over the Chimney Pots

Advemtaife told by Sir. Aflaim CobJham

anybody who has been flying for nearly ton years ol all kinds of aviation jobs is bound to have had some thrilling days, hut for sheer pent-up excitement I shall always have vivid memories of the. day when L was more or less responsible for 40 picture palaces in the United Kingdom showing films of the Derby race on the same evening as the event, by having the film delivered by air. Having got a list of the towns to be supplied, we organised the deliveries into a series of more or less straight flights that would pass over all the selected towns from Plymouth to Aberdeen. It was touch and go whether we could pull the whole stunt off. About, a dozen aeroplanes were going to be employed for the job. I will toll what happened to me on my little trip. DROPPED BY PARACHUTE. It was arranged that we should drop our films by parachute as we passed over the intermediate towns along each route, whore the films would be redistributed by motor-cyclists to surrounding picture houses. White sheets were to be laid in fields marked on a map. I had been working on this scheme for weeks, and I should have been broken-hearted if the organisation had failed, and so I took over the responsibility of getting the film from Epsom to the' printing factory at Barnet. At 2.45 p.m. I landed in a field which we had arranged for the purpose as near as possible to the racecourse, and at three o’clock I restarted my engne, expecting every moment to sec two breathless kinematographers struggling through the hedge with their precious load Three-fifteen came, and there was no sign of them. Three-thirty had passed while I waited and inwardly fumed. The race was half an hour late in starting. At nearly ten to four two breathless men staggered through the hedge. I ordered them to “get in qquick,” and as they clambered into the cabin one of them tried to explain that he had never been up before; but I simply slammed the cabin lid down on top of them, opened out and took off, heading for Barnet film quarters at full throttle. JUMPING HEDGES. Fifteen minutes later I landed in the only possible field we could find within reasonable distance of the factory, and, as arranged, a horseman came cantering up to the machine, snatched the film from us, and went galloping to the roadway throe fields away, jumping each hedge to the factory. Here the film was developed, printed and dried under conditions that will hardly bear talking about. The fumes and atmosphere of the drying room, which was full of methylated, were such that the staff could only exist for a few moments at a time in there, and as each became overpowered relays took their place. In the meantime I had flown back to Staglanc aerodrome to get ready for my flight to Aberdeen, for I was to be the first to start, as I had the longest run before me. ALL READY TO START. A small machine was going to fly backwards and forwards between the Barnet field and Stag-lane aerodrome and deliver the films as they arrived from the factory to the eight waiting ’planes. I was all ready to start on my 500-mile trip, on which I was going to drop films at Y T ork, Dar-

lington, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Captain C. D. Barnard’s trip was via Leicester, Nottingham, Leeds, to Glasgow; Captain Broad was going via Bristol, Exeter, to Plymouth; Captain Wilson was doing Birmingham, ißanchestcr, Liverpool; and we had borrowed other pilots to do the South and East Coast routes. The minutes ticked on, and the worry and excitement were intense, the prospect of reaching Aberdeen diminished. At 5.55 p.m. we sighted our delivery machine in the air, and two minutes later it had landed. Men rushed forward and grabbed the prints, and quickly transferred them to my machine. Each packet was attached to its respective parachute (this procedure had been rehearsed), and by 6 p.m. we wore in the air heading north. An hour and a-half after starting we sighted York. Hundreds of people wore out on the racecourse to sec us come in, and without deviating our course or throttling down we heaved our load overboard and passed on, and as we looked back we could see eager hands retrieving the parachute. A few moments later, Darlington . . . then Newcastle Town Moor . . and off again. It was getting dusk as we flew over the Lowlands of Scotland, and when Edinburgh at last come into view I began to get worried about the. possibilities of reaching Aberdeen, a hundred miles farther on. It was 9.30 p.m. and very nearly dark when we dropped the films in a field near Leith, and wo crossed the Firth of Forth almost in darkness. The curious fact was that the farther north we went after this the lighter it became. The whole sky away to the north became quite bright, and I felt that the higher I climber, and the farther north I went, despite the increasing lateness of the hour, the lighter it would have become. I suppose that if I had flown long enough I should have reached the Land of the Midnight Sun, for it was June. THEY THOUGHT US SO CLEVER. After only about four and a-half hours’ flying, which for me had been full of little anxieties regarding its ultimate success, we reached Aberdeen at 10.25 p.m. We heaved our load over at the appointed field, but somehow this parachute got caught in the tail, and I discovered that our precious load of film, with which we had raced all the way from London, was dangling from a cord that was twisted round the tailskid. By this time we were over the town; then worse things happened. The string broke, and to our horror we saw the packet dropping into the mass of bricks and mortar. Imagine our feelings, after coming 500 miles, for the achievement to be ruined. I turned our machine away, disgusted, and a little later landed in a field well north of the town, very dejected. After a little while folks came on the scene, and one pressed himself forward with a message that had come over the ’phone to a house near by, which said that our precious films had dropped in the back yard of a house which happened to be next door to the picture palace, and that the film of the Derby was shown on the screen at 10.37 p.m. The residents thought that we were marvellous people to be able to drop the films so near to the picture-house, and being very tired wo didn’t trouble to-enlighten them as to the truth of the situation. All the other pilots reached their destinations; in fact, the whole organisation went without a hitch, and the forty picture palaces saw the film on the same night as the Derby.