AVIATION PIONEER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 257, 31 October 1939, Page 8

AVIATION PIONEER

TRIP ROUND WORLD PASSING CALL AT SYDNEY SYDNEY, Oct. 4. Sydney has had a fleeting visit front a pioneer of aviation —a man who was a contemporary of Bleriot and Latham and who now, at the age of 70 years, is fulfilling an ambition to fly round the world. He is Mr, Arthur Batchelor, who despite his three-score years and ten, still holds a pilot's licence. He built and flew his own monoplane in 1910. Until recently he owned four aeroplanes, but he has handed them over to the British Government for training purposes.

Mr. Batchelor arrived in Sydney by a 200 miles an hour Dutch airliner from Batavia, after crossing the South Pcc.flc from San Francisco to Manila by way of Honolulu, Wake, Midway, and Guam Islands. Alighting from the speedy Dutch aircraft, he recalled that his 1910 aeroplane achieved the then amazing speed of 40 miles an hour. “I built it," he said, "with ash braced with piano wire, and it was considered to be an engineering marvel at the time. I can thoroughly recommend flying to any young man—the air is clean." Mr. Batchelor said that he knew

Bleriot when he made his flight over the English Channel in 1909, thus winning the Daily Mail prize o£ 110,000 for the first man to link France and England by air. He also knew Latham, Bleriot's rival. He dreamed than tnat it might some day be possible to fly round the world, but he admitted that he did not foresee that airliners would cruise at more than 200 miles anhour. Mr. Batchelor’s whirlwind visit ‘ to glimpse Australia and see what is going on" lasted three days. Then he flew on—in a Dutch airliner—to Egypt.