ATLANTIC AIRWAYS

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19759, 14 December 1935, Page 24 (Supplement)

ATLANTIC AIRWAYS

THE PIONEER WORK. REGULAR SERVICES MOOTED. BRITISH CRAFT SELECTED. Sixteen years ago two coui.«gyous and determined pilots set out on one of the most daring flights ever attempted in the history of aviation, the direct crossing of the north Atlantic Ocean. To-day preparations are in train for the establishment of regular services across*that same ocean and at the general meeting of Imperial Airways Limited recently the chairman of the company announced that a “composite aircraft” and a large flying boat had been ordered for undertaking the experimental, work. The contrast between the flight and the flights which are now contemplated could hardly be more marked and the only point of similarity between them is that British aeroplanes and British engines are concerned in both. It was on June 14, 1919, that Captain John Alcock and Lieut. Arthur Whitten Brown set out from St. John's, Newfoundland, in . their Vickers Vimy biplane fitted with two 350 h.p. Rolls-Royce engines. For over sixteen hours they flew through appalling weather and then landed in Ireland, the first men ever to have flown an aeroplane across the Atlantic Ocean non-stop. The story of that flight is one of unprecedented heroism. The airmen were enveloped in fog. Climbing brought them into dense banks of clouds. For long per-* iods they were flying blind. The air speed indicator became choked up with sleet and ceased to work. At one time the aeroplane got into a spin and suddenly came out of the clouds only about 50 feet above the sea. Alcock managed to right it and re-set it upon its course.