NEW COMMERCIAL ’PLANE DISPLAY AT FARNBOROUGH

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 14, 1 November 1948, Page 5

NEW COMMERCIAL ’PLANE DISPLAY AT FARNBOROUGH

Impressions Of A New Zealander (By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist) London, Sept. 16. What good will come to New ' Zealand from last week’s Farnborough air display, annual show window of the British aircraft industry, has not been said.

Sleek .as anything in the sky was the Airspeed Ambassador, 40-seat medium range airliner capable of being switched to prop-jets when they become available. British European Airways Corporation, whose stages are not unlike those in' New Zealand, have since the display ordered 20 Ambassadors at £150,000 apiece. And* the Ambassadors are replacements for Vikings, a post-war aircraft themselves. Among the Farnborough heavyweights shone the Handley Paige Hermes, 40-seat airliner for the trunk routes of Empire. British Overseas Airways Corporation have placed a substantial order, which will take time to fill, even though speedier . deliveries .. should come from the Hermes’ close kinship with the Hastings, transport, already in quantity production for the R>.A F. There was nothing new, except a little more power, about the Bristol Freighter displayed. One once did a short tour of duty on the Cook Strait air lift and is said to have won his way to the heart of the then General Manager of Railways, a gentleman not unfamiliar with the technique of shifting freight. For feeder lines, such as NAC is now flying with. Rapides, Farnborough offered the De Havilland Dove, one of which has already flown in New Zealand. It is questionable whether, aerodromes permitting, any NAC routes will do such sparse business as to need only eight seaters. The military aspect of Farnborough suggested that the R.N.Z.A.F’s Mosquitos are soon going to be much the same proposition as the dauntless Bristol Fighters which kept the service strong between the wars.

Nothing but jets cut much ice in military aviation today. No jet bombers were displayed—there are range and fuel consumption problems to be solved —but they are on the way. Without at least one flight of jets, and a pool of pilots trained on them, the R.N.Z.A.F. will not be the service some taxpayers, dazzled by Mosquito displays at air pageants, may believe. Vampires would seem as good a fighter as any for New Zealand, seeing the jet market so far lacks .our primary domestic requirement, a long range strike aircraft with which to get at the enemy well .offshore. To the best of my knowledge Vampires are the only jet fighters being produced in'Australia, and to have spares and replacements so handy ’ would be a clinching argument. .