GERMAN ENTERPRISE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20109, 30 March 1928, Page 7

GERMAN ENTERPRISE

HUGE NEW MONOPLANE TWELVE SEPARATE ENGINES. LONDON, Alarch 24. The Air League’s intelligence section has secured the first authentic details of a gigantic secret aircraft, now in course of construction, which will dwarf in size all existing heavier-than-air craft. Brigadier-General R. R. C. Groves, formerly British air representative on the permanent Advisory Commission of the League of Nations, told a representative of the Daily Alail that there had been persistent rumours for months of this mammoth craft, and the Air League was now able to reveal that it is a monoplane flying boat, and will inaugurate a new era in air design.

It is being built by the German Dornier Company, situated on Lake Constance, and it is expected* to be completed at the end of the year. Its weight when fully loaded will be 44 tons, and its wing-span approximately 158 ft. It will have twelve separate engines, developing 6000 horsepower, while its crew of nine will consist of a navigator, two pilots, wireless operators, engineers, and stewards. It will contain a dining saloon and sleeping accommodation for 50 passengers. Brigadier-General Groves added that Germany is determined to create a mercantile air marine with huge metal flying boats, and dominate the ocean airways throughout the world. Even this mammoth, he said, does not present the limit at which the Germans arc aiming. The larger question, however, is that Britain Is already being outdistanced in European aviation, owing to official procrastination, and is going behind hand in the coming international competition for trans-oceanic traffic. Britain’s largest commercial flying boat at present is only 1500 horse-power and weighs nine tons.