A LONE FLIGHT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 110, 12 May 1931, Page 8

A LONE FLIGHT

WOMAN PILOT’S EXPLOIT Many important people in British aviation, including several women pilots, greeted Mrs Victor Bruce at Croydon aerodrome recently, when she returned to London at the close of a world tour by air and sea which began nearly five months before. Piloting the Bluebird light aeroplane which earned her nearly 20,000 miles, Mrs Bruce flew the last stage of her long journey from Lympne, on the Kentish coast, where she landed the day before, escorted by a triumphal “squadron” ot private fliers, among whom were Miss Winifred Spooner and Miss Amy Johnson. Mrs Bruce flew on 47 days, meeting all kinds of weather and traversing some of the most difficult flying country in the world. When she loft England her total flying experience barely totalled forty hours, and her entire knowledge of air navigation comprised facts learned in five lessons. That she succeeded, with this small equipment, of experience and knowledge, in making her way safely across the world, is striking proof of the trustworthiness and inherent simplicity’ of the modern light aeroplane. She was obliged by impossible weather conditions to land on two or three occasions, and once or twice, she lost her way, but her invariable safe arrival and the success of a most ambitious project relegates these incidents to a place of minor importance. Looking back over he- journey, Mrs Bruce expressed the opinion that the worst stage was that across the den-.e forests of Siam, where for mile after mile there was no place where a forced landing might be accomplished in safety.. Her machine, the Blackburn “Bluebird,” is an all-metal light biplane normally fitted with two seats placed side by side instead of the more usual tandem arrangement. It is fitted with a Gypsy 11. air-cooled four-cylin-der engine.