Round the World

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 105, 4 May 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

Round the World

Ihe most daring project of aviation an attempted non-stop flight round the world—which hitherto had been regarded as beyond the realm of possibility, is approaching realisation within the present year. Colonel Arthur C. Goebel, noted distance av.d speed pilot, tentatively sets August or September for the flight, which he says will be west to east from Witeiuta (Kansas, U.S.A.) to Witchita. Almost simultaneously it is ’revealed in Paris (says the Christian {Science Monitor) that the latest project of the. Fokker aviation firm is a non-stop flight in Hie same direction from Paris to Paris, possibly in June. Both projects call for refuelling planes at intervals along the 24,000 mile route. Colonel Goebel made no announcement of where attendant planes would be stationed but a fully definite idea of the route of the projected Fokker flight was contained in an announcement that attendant ships would be situated at Aleppo in Syria, Karachi and Calcutta in fnd’a, Hongkong in China, Vladivostock, Pctropovlosk, and Kamchatka in Siberia, and if a northern route across North America is selected, at Prince Rupert, or Vancouver, Winnipeg, and St. Johns (N.F.). If the southern rouce is preferred stations will be at Chicago and New York.

The Fokker’s attendant ships would meet the world traveller in the air, and accompany it for such distance as required for re-fuelling and re-supply. Colonel Goebel, who won the Dole Air Race at Hawaii in 1927, and who holds the non-stop American transcontinental flight record, said such a flight would require a great deal of financial backing and a real aeroplane.

Success in a continuous flight round the world undoubtedly would more than cut in half the present round-the-world speed record of 23 days 15 hours and 21 minutes, made with steamers and aeroplanes in July, 1928, by Captain C. B. D. Collyer and John Heaiy Mears.