THE FLYING MAIL

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 278, 13 August 1918, Page 3

THE FLYING MAIL

WHAT AERIAL TRANSPORT WILL MEAN SIR JOSEPH WARD'S DREAM ■ /

1 (By "Sylvius.")

Sir Joseph Ward, the cablegrams say, has decided that an aerial postal service is to be inaugurated in New Zealand. The messago did not state when. "It may bs'for years, and it may be for ever" was always one of the PostmasterGeneral's favourite songs, but its sentiment need not apply to the consignment of His Majesty's mails to that "ompty, vast, and wandering air" that Shakespeare writes of. For once , the Bard wrote of what he knew not of. Airmen could tell i him, if he revisited this sphere, that the air is a very .solid kind of material • capablc of supporting, with a hit of mechanical push, machines and their freight many tons in weight; that to get round a corner in the "vast empyrean" 0110 has to "bank" precisely as a bicycle does on a speedway, and that the air has "pockets." Sir Joseph Ward lias always had the Postal service of tliis country at heart, snd his terms of Postmaster-Generalship have always been marked as progressive regimes for that important Department of the State. His idea of carrying mails by aeroplane is not at all fantastic. It arises from a first-hand knowledge of the measure of reliability which has been achieved by the latest aeroplanes in England and on the Continent (apart from the exigencies. of warfare). There is 110 known means of forwarding corl'espondence with greater speed than can be dono to-day ,by high-powered aircraft. The original machines of the Wrights/ and Graham White were clumsy buses compared with the machines which are helping us to win the war on the Western front, and in point of stability (wherein lies reliability) they compare perhaps-in the same relation as does George Stephenson's first steam engine to a modern Baldwin. The war has quickened invention to an extent that dazzles the imagination, and the coherent 6tory of the maimer in which England has outpaced Germany in the manufacture of aircraft is one of those chapters in the history of tho war yet to be written. That Sir Joseph Ward's idea 9f establishing (lying mail services is not in the least degreo extravagant may be judged by the reports of an aerial mail service that has been at least experimented with, if not established, botween New York and Washington, whero an airman covered the. distance with mails from New York to Washington and back again to New York in -under five hours. With modern aeroplanes in suitable weather it is calculated that, the distance between Auckland and Wellington, as the crow flies, could be covered in four' hours, say with one stop—on the Waimarino Plains. The distance is only about .310 miles, which' could be easily covered in normal weather in two stages, of 155 miles each—an easy distance journey for any of tho larger modern machines. Such a journey would not be considered any performance at all for a Ifandley-Paige machine of the typo which has been used in bombing Constantinople during the past year. Unfortunately the Empire City, enringed with mountain ranges, is not well favoured in respect to landing places for\ aerial craft,, and were air services established provision would have to be made for a fair-ly well protected aerodrome. Auckland presents no 6ueh difficulties. , There is ample flat country , quite near the city, a portion of which could be secured as a landing and starting ground, tho exact location of which would probably be determined by pilots of experience. So far Cook Strait has never been crossed by an aeroplane. There was some talk, five or six years ago, about the trip which Hammond or Scotland (or both)'were to undertake, but tho difficulties of landing at this side of the Strait wore then referred to as one of the obstacles in the path of these airmen. To a skilled airman of experience a flight to Christchurch under favourable -weather conditions would not be a vorv formidable feat of air craftsmanship. The one danger is .the risk of having_ to descend, through engine trouble or some other 'aiinp, at a place where .vast oceaii spaces stretch out, latitudinally, 011 either side, of a comparatively attenuated strip of land, but even that contingency fades away when one reads of the early possibility of aircraft making the nassaue of the Atlantic.

Tile question as to whether air mail .'services would pay is another matter altogether. There are many people who would be prepared to pay'iycll to have urgent correspondence sent by the aerial route, but there would scarcely be sufficient inducement to the ordinary commercial and business community "to pay heavily for the upkeep of such a service. The recent storms experienced in North Canterbury open out possibilities for air emergency aerial service for telegrams (instead of having to resort to the expedient of posting them south from Wellington by boat), but it would be extremely problematical if .such a service could be made possible during a blizzard such as was recently experienced. /At present the institution of aerial mail services in New Zealand is easily within the bounds of practicability, but it is extremely questionable whether such a service would bestow advantages commensurate with (lie cost and risk involved.

The proposal is not a new one. It is ever so old. Sir Julius Vogel, in his book, "Anno Domini, 2000," occasional copies of which may now and again be picked up by the book-linnter, brings the characters., in his story from Melbourne to Stewart Island by a monster aircraft in sovon hours. But Sir Julius gives ua another 82 years to accomplish the journey of his fertile imagination,