AVIATION NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1934, Page 6

AVIATION NEWS

LONDON TO CONTINENT

SHOW IN DENMARK

BRITAIN EIGUEES jWELL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, August 31.

Owing to the speed of air travel, it is pqssible to visit Cologne, enjoy a steamer trip by the Rhine, and be back again in London —all within a! holiday weekend.

A fascinating trip, with wonderful views en route, is from London to Borne. Leaving Croydon in the morning, one flies to Basle and Zurich, changing there to an. air liner which passes over the Alps, and reaches Milan that same evening. After spending a night in Milan the journey is resumed next morning. There is.an increasing volume of trarS lie on the air route to Switzerland. There is busy traffic, also, on the- sei> vices to the Belgian coast. Ostend is only one hour twenty minutes from London by air and, on arrival in Belgium, holidaymakers-have a choice of many interesting excursions. To Le. Touqiiet the bookings continue heavy, particularly by the popular Sunday excursions. The air trip from Croydon to Le Touquet now occupies only one hour five minutes. Taking several typical tours, each lasting a week, the saving of time in travel, by flying from point to point, " is from two and a half to three days, compared with surface;transport. Sir Thomas Wilford recently made the journey to Berlin and back by air —an experience that* greatly delighted and thrilled him. Imagine breakfast: ing in Berlin and reaching London before luncheon! By the ordinary method of travel by land and sea the time scheduled is over nineteen hours. He made both journeys; in: a Luft Hansa machine, whicji on the -return ,topk four hours' direct to Amsterdam and Croyr don, crossing the North Sea for about 200 miles and sighting . first land at Chatham. The trip wg.s undertaken by Sir Thomas on behalf of certain oil interests in the City of London. In this connection he had interviews with Baron yon. Neurath and Dr. Sehacht, President of 'the Reichsbank and. Minister of Commprce. and Industry.- The trip occupied a week. It so happened that it was-the time of President yon Hindenburg's funeral. Sir Thpinas was present at the Foreign. Office and heard Herr Hitler's funeral oration and General Goering also, on tho day previous to the funeral, . . . -. . Mr. Edward M. P, Shipton (Palmerston North) makes to Lady Houston, through the ''Saturday Eeview,"' the unofficial suggestion that —as her offer of £.200,000 to the citizens.of London fl appears to haye been discourteously ignored by the English Government— "if such offer wero made to the Government' of this ppminion it wpuld probably receive.iriore sympathetic treatment, as the question of aerial defence is considered a matter of vital importance by tha general public of this farflung outpost of the Empire." The chief flying event of the past week was the Scandinavian Air Race, a two-days' contest over a course of nearly 1000 miles, which ended in a v win for Lieutenant Thunberg, of the . Koyal Swedish Air Force, by a tiny fraction of a point over Lieutenant Clausen, of the Danish Army. The winner learned to fly in 1914, and is a Swedish member of the "caterpillar" club, having saved his life by_ parachute some years' ago. His. winning machine was a Dutch biplane powered with a Bristol Jupiter engine. Clausen flew in one of the de Havilland Dragon craft which were acquired recently for the use of the Danish Army Air Force., lln all, forty •" machines started—l 7 Danish, 18 -Swedish, and 5 Norwegian —and thirty-three finished, COPENHAGEN EXHIBITION, Copenhagen has reason to be proud of the success'of its second International Aircraft Exhibition, ' By the end of the tenth day over 70,000 people had paid for admission. More than one-third of the floor space is occupied by the "England" Section, or- ' ganised by the Society of British Aircraft Constructors under the supervision of Captain H. E. Gillman, secretary of the society. Twenty-eight firms are represented, and their stands are centres of great interest. The -Btitfsh. participants are well satisfied. They have shown spine of their latest products not only to the Danes, who are good buyers of British aeronautical material, but to military and civilian air engineers and experts "from several other ppuntrics, and notably from Norway, Sweden, Fin--,land, and Poland, Actually, British exhibits extend much further than the area of the ''England" section. On the stand of the Royal Danish Naval Dockyard, dwarfing every other machine in the hall, is the Hawker Dantorp torpedo^ bomber, a big biplane powered with a Siddeley Leopard 800 h.p. motor which is built under licence, in the dockyard and is employed for long-range reconnaissance in Scandinavian waters.Close by is the first Hawkes Nimrod single-seater fighter to be built by the dockyard, which is at present engaged "in a batch of ten of these extremely fast and efficient machines. The Nimrod is intended for over-water flying, and, iike its sister craft in tho British Fleet Air Arm, carries an exceptionally comprehensive military and navigational load, but a placard posted beside it is able to claim a maximum level speed of 200 miles per hour, economical cruising speed of 162 miles per hour, climb to 16,400 feet above sea-level in Bmin oOsec, and a service "coiling" of 32,800 feet. In addition to two machine-guns, the Nimrod is equipped to carry four 28-pound bombs in a rack fixed on the underside of the starboard lower wing. Three Nimrod steel fuselages are in an advanced stage of assembly at-'the dockyard. The standard of workmanship is exceptionally high, and is frankly admitted by the Hawkes experts to compare favourable with the best work turned out at the company's own works. Incidentally, one of tho most popular "turns", at the exhibition is that of the skilled artisan on the dockyard stand who is engaged in making wooden ribs for Nimrod wings. On the stand of the Eoyal Danish Army Air Service, British influence is again dominant. Ade Havilland Tiger Moth light trainer and a Gipsy Major 130 h.p. engine, a Bristol Pegasus 700 h.p- radial motor, British undercarriage components, and British rudio apparatus make up the bulk of tho exhibit. The Dutch-designed generalpurpose biplane or. view has a Pegasus engine. There could be no better proof, in fact, of the high reputation earned by the British aircraft products in Denmark than these extremely wollltaged official army and navy stands.