FEAT OF DARING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20168, 9 June 1928, Page 7

FEAT OF DARING

A GREAT POLAR FLIGHT WILKINS AND EIEUZ-ON HONOURED. [ British Official Wireless. J RUGBY, June 7. A luncheon was given to-day by the British Government in honour of Sir George Wilkins, the Australian aviator, and Mr Eiclson, who recently flew across the North Pole and Arctic Oceai from Alaska to Spitzbergen. Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary for Air, who presided, congratulated Sir George Wilkins on having been honoured by the King with a knighthood. He referred to the fact that both Sir G. Wilkins and Mr Eielson had made three Arctic flying .expeditions that would always hold a place in the records of Exploration and discovery, and declared that their latest joint flight was the most conspicous and successful of all. They had set themselves the task of crossing tfio Polar Sea from Alaska to Spitzbergen by a new route. For threequarters of their journey they were flying over a part of the world that had never been seen by any man. The weather and visibility were bad, and at one time the temperature was 50 degrees below zero, and at another the worst storm that Spitzbergen has ever endured at this season of the year broke upon them. Yet they continuously carried out their observations, and in a space of 20 flying hours successfully completed their splendid adventure. They had accomplished not only a feat of bravery, but also a work of definite usefulness in value. The distance bet wee - England and Japan was <l5OO miles by the route over the North Pole as compared with over 11,000 miles by the ordinary flying routes of to-day. Who should say that with the development of the airship and aeroplane the polar regions might not in the future become the regular and accepted route of swift travel between the West and the East? What better testimony could be afforded than that man was subduing by machinery the brute forces ol Nature? We had only to compare the history of former Polar expeditions with that of this expedition. Ice-bound ship.’, troops of Eskimos, lines of dogs, long trails, and months and often years of absence were in great contrast with this of t.’.ose two men in a tiny machine for 2i hours through the air. Sir Samuel Hoare made sympathetic reference to the .irship Itaba and expressed the earnest hope that her crew might survive what appeared to have been & disaster.