FUTURE OF AVIATION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 67, 27 April 1943, Page 3

FUTURE OF AVIATION

LATE WHAKATANE BOY'S

REVIEW

TEN YEAR OLD ESSAY

Printed in the Herald Supplement of ten years ago, was the following •review on the 'Progress, of Aviation' Jsy the late. Pilot Officer Nelson W. W. Warner, of Whakatane. We have pleasure in once again giving it the light of da3 r as a fitting journalistic niemoriam to a young man of promise who has since made the supreme sacrifice in the service of his country. The. essay which was written when he was little more than a youth reads as under:— " —And I dipt into the future . . ." ("Loc.ksley Hall") —Tennyson. Cynics of 30 years; ago scoffed at the Wrights "windmi'lls" and belittled the Channel crossing of the gallant Bleriot questioning its effect (if any) on future generations. Science, planted in the time of Aris- * totle and Cicero, flourished in the medieval period under the guidance of d'Avinci Toroni and their school of alchemy and bears fruit to-day in the hands of such masters as Rutherford and Lodge—this represents growth over a period of ccn-! turies. Art, after slowly germinating in Egypt, Carthage and Greece, sprang to life 1 under the fostering of Augustus,. bloomed and fruited with Angelo, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Waterhoptse and a host of others, and i« ■depreciating to-day under the. futuristic school. Again this transition period is over thousands of years. Aviation lias, taken but 35 years to reach commercial pre-eminence ■ —it is a marvel of ihodern progress. WTio. of the older generation has not heard of, or seen, those cumbersome machines of 25 years ago that the Walsh Brothers, of Koliimarama, , operated, together with a fleet of speed-boats. Even the most far-seeing "tnan in the street'' of the time could not couple them Avith such monsters as the Southern Cross or the Faith in Australia, both of which have become, more or less, familiar to us. The Walsh Brothers were laughed at—ca'lled eccentrics—yet it was they and men of their calibre Avho raised flying to its present status, and those same "hurdy gurdies" "were the ancestors of. the commercial air giants of to-day. In the past the South Island had Sir Henry Wigrarn as its supporter of the then "thankless muse.'' This man brought not only his sympathy to the assistance of aviation, but what in those early days, mattered more —financial aid —thus we may i write'him down as one of the great philanthropists, and it seems fitting that he should see developed that which he fdstered—thct chief aerodrome of the south which bears his name* There are many New Zealandcrs of less importance, but Avho all gave their contributions towards the advarreement of the aeroplane, but a'lways our thoughts fly to those pioneers of flying who "broke the ice", in New Zealand—the Walsh Brothers.. And that kindly man Avho tended what seemed a sickly unacclimatised plant—Wigrarn. a • • m We can breakfast at Auckland, drop in for an early lunch at Ro-to-rua, and, still be in time for tea at Wellington—and to think that for suggesting such a thing jn the late Victorian era one' would be rushed to a brain specialist as an urgent case. Verne, for hinting at such a rapid mode of travel, was dudded in an Edinburgh review of 1887 as "a moral danger to the younger generation/' We have more than accomplished Verne's dreams. We have llown over the world's greatest mountains (to a ceiling of 45,000 feet in fact), have torn through space at nearly 400 miles per hour, and have flown for thousands of miles across the wi'ldest. sea and maddest jungle—flown to the end of the earth —to New Zealand. The comparatively new idea of air mails is .surprisingly popular in New Zealand —it may be the novelty, hut I think it has come to stay, and in the forthcoming Centenary Air l*ace the wonderful development in the speed and reliability (the* latter of which is most necessary in mail) carrying wil'l prove conclusiveljtliat the air mail is by far the best. We. once entertained great hope! for the dirigible, but the fatalities of the RlOl and the Akron have, I am afraid, pushed the lighter-than-iiir craft into the future; but that 5s not to say that it will never be

perfected, as these days one never can te'U. But what we dp want is a regular international passenger service—just think—Auckland to London in 10 days. A * » Dare Ave gaze into the future? Oh, to see the world 100 year," hence! Giant space ships Avill link the planets. Dirigibles of tremendous proportions will ply between the countries. Transport Avill have become a highly-evolved, science of and. efficiency—we then wonder if the human frame Avill be able to keep pace, to stand the strain of the. machines Avhieh it has fashioned. lint Ave must not gaze at the picrture through rose spectacles, as the memory of those gallant pioneers— Hinkler, Hood, MoncriefT—will always 'linger in our minds. "•—to strive, to seek, but not to yieid. 5 '