AIR MAIL ARMADA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 136, 6 December 1938, Page 12

AIR MAIL ARMADA

GIGANTIC TASK

THE CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

ENGLAND-AUSTRALIA

(Fiom "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, December 2.

Thirty-one flying-boats, the Mercury seaplane, and 33 landplanes, a total of 65 aircraft, will be engaged on the England-Australia air service over the Christmas and New Year mail period. Powered by engines . aggregating 146,460 horse*po\ver this Armada of the air, the greatest ever concentrated on a commercial aviation enterprise, will fly a total of 1,100,000 miles in five weeks. . More than the equivalent of ten flights round the earth at the Equator will be made each week in exchanging Yuletide greetings and gifts between England and British Dominions, colonies, and possessions. Between last Wednesday and January 2, twenty-one flying-boat services will arrive at Sydney with mails from overseas, and 21 services will depart for England. Of the 42 services in and out of Sydney, 12 will be operated by flying-boats, stripped of all passenger accommodation fittings, thus permitting 11001b of mail extra to be carried on each trip. On December 14 five Empire flying-boats will be-moor-ed at Rose Bay. Supplementing the flying-boat services a Douglas airliner will make three return trips on the Calcutta-Darwin section. The seaplane Mercury, upper component of the Mayo composite aircraft and holder of the world's distance record for seaplanes, will make five nonstop flights from Southampton to Alexandria, and five in the reverse direction, completing 24,7.50 miles of flying. The Mercury will be launched from its mothercraft Maia at Southampton, enabling increased mail loads to be carried. ■ ■ ■ ' • Of the 31 flying-boats engaged on the England-Australia service, 27 will be of the familiar Empire class, six being owned by Qantas Empire Airways. Three will be of the new Cabot class fitted with sleeve-valve engines. Five of the new Ensign 20-ton airliners, the largest landplanes in commercial service in the world, will be employed on the London-Karachi section and will fly 61,300 miles over the Christmas period. Two of the new Albatross airliners which are to carry out experimental flights next year on the Atlantic service will also be included in the Christmas air-mail fleet. Compilation of operation charts, placing the necessary aircraft in position, estimating mail loads to be^lifted at the 37 stopping places along the England-Australia air route, and arranging the details of the greatest air transport task ever undertaken, have kept British, postal officials and the air operating companies—lmperial Airways and Qantas Empire Airways— working at high pressure for several months. It has been estimated that the total Christmas and New Year mail to be lifted by air out of Southampton will be 240 tons (21,500,000 letters). The mail to be delivered to England by the Empire air fleet, it is thought, willj fall little short of this figure.