ALONG THE SKYWAYS

Waikato Times, Volume 117, Issue 19597, 8 June 1935, Page 22 (Supplement)

ALONG THE SKYWAYS

BIG AIR RACE. NEW ZEALANDER'S STORY. FIRST ACCOUNT OF FLIGHT. M. <L McGREGOR’S EXPERIENCES. “What they describe as their first and probably their last attempt to give a written account of their great flight from Mlldenhall to Melbourne in their Miles Hawk Is given by M. C. McGregor and H. C. Walker in the latest Issue of the Aeroplane to arrive by .mail f?rom England, under the heading “Those New Zealanders.” Though belated, it is of interest, says an exchange, as being by far the longest public statement made by either man, either in writing or in speech, on the inside story oi their great effort, and also because or the refreshingly unrestrained and unconventional approach to their subject. Passages, from the letter include the following remarks: “With the exception of one day at home since arriving in New Zealand, we have been on the go since, leaving England. Never go In for an air race; it’s quite Hie simplest part of it. Johnny and I have drunk more beer, made more speeches .and answered more questions than ever before in our lives. Putting aside ■all the business in Melbourne, Sydney and on the boat, we were pushed off on a tour of New Zealand the day after we arrived. The daily routine has been: Fly to the next town, meet the Mayor and his retinue, when they either stand us on a lorry or take us to the Town Hall. In the afternoon we fly until it is time to go to the dinner arranged for us —from there to appear at the picture theatre, after which Kve are rushed off to a dance. You can imagine how we like publicity, anyway.

Description of Race. McGregor evidently wrote the letter, though it is signed “ Mac and Johnny.” The race is described in detail, some observations being—‘‘Finding ourselves among the trees somewhere south of Abbeville, we pulled up into the clouds, and doing a steady 120 kept on our course to 9000 feet. Here we argued that it was better to fly blind than to go higher and freeze. 'Later we tried another 1000 feet and came out into beautiful sunshine. The clouds broke near the coast, and we put the nose down for the aerodrome, averaging 147 miles an hour for the trip. The trip across to Rome was just water, and that always looks the same anyway. "It was dark half an hour after we left Rome, and as It was still dark until we got to Cyprus next morning there Isn’t much to tell you about that. We didn't run out of petrol at Athens, as some papers reported—refuelling proved that we had five gallons left. "At this stage between Aleppo and Bagdad we found that we had to fly between 5000 and 6000 feet, and sometimes higher, to keep the oil pressui’6 from dropping. Had an oil temperature gauge been fitted, probably heart failure would have been the result. Th« “Rosooe Turner Stunt.” “At the various aerodromes, in daylight, we used to do what we later termed the ‘Roscoe Turner stunt’— that was to put the nose down some distance away, and quietly gathering speed, end up over the aerodrome with the pitot showing 50 the second time seoond time round. One of the officials at Allahabad said: ‘Good Heavens! What the Hell’s this you’ve got? Wo thought the Comet was fast, but ’ “Allahabad to Calcutta—where they informed us we were under the three days. It might have been—we didn’t care so long as we could get up out of the heat. "It was dark again at Rangoon and we found wireless masts in the air everywhere at 2000 feet, but no aerodrome. After dodging these lights, and tearing around the sky for well over half an hour, both firmly of the opinion iliat we had done too much dying, wc came in low down and very cautiously from another direction. “ Some bright lad fired a Very pistol and we landed to find that we had struck the one night of the year when ■lho natives have a ‘Carnival of Lights.’ The wireless masts were lanterns tied lo balloons and not Rugby on a bigger scale. "Without brakes all the way through wc tried bard lo break llic Hawk un-

PROGRESS IN AVIATION

der-carriage by swinging on the ground to take off speed, but we didn’t seem able lo do it. At Rangoon, where we were warned not to land at night because of the slope of the aerodrome, it took full rudder almost before the wheels were on the ground, and broke our previous record by doing three complete turns before stopping.

"We arrived at Victoria Point just at daylight (not a checking point, but we had arranged in England to have petrol there), to find a naviator’s delight.—the country covered in fog. Wc knew by the few peaks sticking out that we were there, but didn’t know that its aerodrome is eight miles incorrectly marked on the map, so we wasted a lot of time getting down through the fog, and chasing up and down among the alligators and mangrove trees, or whatever they have in the river there.

"The trip lo AloT Star was quite peaceful above the clouds, with us both trying to forget that machines with spats- were warned not to land there. After re-fuelling we managed, with the help of numerous people, to taxi to the end of the field. They pointed out the best runway. Jt wasn’t, and wo ended up in a mud bole at 40 miles an. hour. A number of them pulled us out, bent the spats straight, and this time, after taking the full 800 yards, we scrambled over a mud-bank at the other end. With balloon tyres there would have been no trouble. “How It Could Rain!” “Between Alor Star and Singapore we began to get some indication of how it could rain. The cheerful lads at Singapore, quite a number of whom we knew, filled us up with tea and

petrol, and we were on our way to Batavia. It got dark as usual—and can it rain? Aeroplanes seem to upset the clouds down that way and they take delight in falling on top of them. "Numerous instruments brought us out over the lights of Batavia. They charge somewhere in the vicinity of £5 to put the lights on there, and it took us a while, even with our Scotch desoent. to persuade them that we always took off better without them.

“After re-fuelling at Koepang just before dark, all thoughts of the sleep we might have had in Darwin disappeared when we discovered the nosepiece of the cowling too badly split to go on. So off tlie propeller and cowling had to come, to bo mended with the aid of a Chinaman.

"We got away about midnight, and the gyro, through various rainstorms, found Darwin. We had been trying to reach Australia in four days something, but the hours just would keep adding up to make the extra 15. “Again it was too hot to stay in Darwin more than half an hour. The duststorms met us 100 miles from Newcastle Waters. We found the aerodrome but nearly flew through the tin shanty which serves as a pub in doing so.

“Now at this stage the Hawk, even with our having to land away from checking points for petrol, getting hogged, and not being able to locate aerodromes in the dark, had the Handicap Race well in hand. We knew that, but the people who have criticised us for not waiting at a checking point didn’t know the heat, the numerous flies of a small and ferocious breed, nor our ambition to sample the Melbourne beer. Terrible Dust Storms. "We couldn’t, as we usually did with clouds, go up into them and fly by instruments, because the dust was reported at Cloncurry. We did everything but taxi for something like 300 miles to j-ust past Brunette Downs. Each track we followed turned out eventually to be on the wrong compass course. We found Brunette Downs again, filled up with petrol, and for an hour and a-half, sometimes 1(10 miles away, searched for that track in Hie desert until we gave it up in disgust. With all this never above 100 | •cel, and the fact that at Brunette Downs they had told us that they had never known an aviator ycl who hadn’t been lost there at one lime or another, we began to have our doubts about even getting back (here again. We found on returning that the local mailman, who had flown the route for three months, had to land to locate himself, and then only got on to the next station. So bang went at least 15 hours away from a checking point. "Next morning wc found, in good weather, that the track didn’t start at all for 30 miles, having been washed away by rains.

“Luckily, at Charleville someone had told us that there were some high trees at the end of Narromine aerodrome. It was their first night landing, and it looked like it. A red light on tiio fence, and just behind, as we found out afterward, some high trees. Consequently, thinking they might he there, 1 made a rotten landing, bumped my nose against Hie cockpit, and a few minutes later, on a lorry, before what looked like the entire population, made the shortest speech on record.

“We were well on our way in .Melbourne before daylight arrived, and flying low for a change, Die pilot still showing a steady 155 m.p.li. 'And so we tucked the little llawlc under the Douglas at Laverlon Aerodrome, and started a much harder flight in Melbourne; but we would rather not tell you too much about that.”