FLYING BOATS

Evening Star, Issue 19792, 16 February 1928, Page 9

FLYING BOATS

ON WORLD JOURNEY FITTED UP LIKE YACHTS LEISURELY FLIGHT. The Southampton super-marine flying boats may arrive in Sydney from England about the middle of August (states a recent issue of the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald’). They are not hurrying the trip. The average length of their stages is about 400 miles and the longest is 625 miles —between Israelite Bay and Murat and between Melbourne and Sydney. About the same time the two supermarine boats built rather later for the Australian Air Force may arrive in the Commonwealth, and probably they will accompany the Englishmen along the Australian seaboard. Then Captain Cave-Brown-Cavo will take his squadron to Singapore—its permanent base. Theirs is the most extensive flight undertaken by the flying boats of any nation.

Aircraft designers are racing even man’s imagination. Things we dreamt of last night are achieved to-day. Tomorrow they are out of date. Progress is nowhere so headling as in aeronautics. Scarcely more than a year ago super-marine all-metal boats of the type which Group-captain Cave-Brown-Cave is leading to Australia were the anxious hope of designers. On January 19 four of them left Trincomalee, Ceylon, in .continuance of their leisurely course. When they reach Sydney in August we shall probably have heard of new developments, new records, new luxuries in marine aircraft, which will eclipse even these extraordinary machines. But at the moment they are the last word on the subject. When you have heard what these flying boats can do, what comforts they provide, what assurances of safety and speed you feel that the air really is conquered! Now that yon can be in the air without knowing that you are off the ground away from big kitchens and the sources of your fastidious cooking, trips up and down the globe cease to have half as many terrors as a threepenny ride in a tramcar. A few years ago—a year ago even—life in a flying boat was often as comfortable as living in a barrel. The machines could not spare the room or the weight for luxuries, but lighter hulls of metal and developments in aerodynamics have provided for the officers flying now to Australia homes not less delightful than they would find on the yacnts people navigate round the seas. THE QUARTER DECK.

Consider first the quarter deck. It is one of the most agreeable improvements the designer, Mr R. J. Mitchell, has been able to contrive. -Aviators have always suffered pangs of jealous inferiority when they saw how officers of cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and so on could walk up and down a quarter deck. They felt that they lacked a gesture somehow. All that is changed by the quarter deck built by fitting a firm surface to the centre section of the lower wing, -which provides an area sufficient for the patrol of several officers at once. But more than that, it provides a place where hammocks may be slung on unbearable tropical nights, when the collapsible bunks, folding against the side of the hull, are scarcely to be endured. In the daytime, if th© boat is anchored in some scorching, suffocating, breathless harbor, where there is no base and no shelter for th© frizzling men, sun awnings may be drawn fore and aft, and in the big portholes scoops may be placed to catch the remotest suggestion of a draught. In that harbor anchors will hold the boat against any but the heaviest seas. There is not the least reason wffiy the men should stir for days on end if they don’t wish to.

For innumerable lockers contain large supplies of food, supplemented by emergency rations, stored elsewhere, and, gastronomic triumph, doubleburner stoves, set in a specially-en-closed cooking tray, provide bot meals regularly. This exquisite amelioration of hard life is possible because the petrol is carried in wing tanks outside the hull. There, too, are special containers for fresh water. In short, man has carried his drawingroom and his chef into the air on hard service business. EASIER WORK.

Naval tradition dominates the seaplane branch of the Air Force, and the officers of the new Southampton supermarino boats enjoy a minor triumph when they contemplate their flag halyards between the' top and the bottom centre wings, from which each boat may Jiy the Royal Air Force flag as the signal of the commander. Small collapsible skiffs of rubber are a comfort, but beyond all the luxuries provided there, the men probably welcome most the special quick-firing pumps which force the petrol into the large wing tanks. Refuelling on a cruise like this is the despair of the most enthusiastic, especially when they must carry the fuel off from an open beach, prepared to take the boat away immediately the wind rises. Invariably, aviators flying in the Persian Gulf or other delightful tropical places, observe that the sun burns twice as clearly and three times as ferociously when they are refuelling as at any other time. The Air Force does not generally regard the risk of transporting several hundred gallons of petrol to a machine pirouetting and prancing in an entertaining Pacific swell as the sort of business one accompanies with song. That is why the new pumps are so popular. It is possible often to sit in the shade and watch them do the work. Nevertheless, the crews of the boats flying to Australia will have sometimes to tackle a job without the assistance of the pumps, for the flight is designed to provide them with experience in the problems of moving on long independent cruises far from bases. OVERSEA ROUTES. Experts hope also that from this cruise they may gain experience which will enable them to reinl'oruc various points on tsiio Imperial air routes with machines drawn from England and other parts of the Empire. All this draws towards an air line between England and Australia, linking us almost as close to London as we are to Western Australia. How that may be achieved is the idea which keeps aircraft designers and authorities awake at nights now. Recently in the Schneider Cup races, Flight-lieutenant Webster attained a sliced of 284 J miles in a ’plane designed by the same Mr Mitchell who planned the Southampton supermarines. A year before people had been astonished by a record about fifty miles per hour less. Everyone is asking where this development of speed is to end. Some authorities sav that it has reached its limit, and that from this moment the ingenuity and patience of airmen must be devoted to opening up routes which will tie the corners of the earth together. The supermarines are out to see how it may be done. A dream, you say. Well, it is so little of a dream that two all-metal 1,500 h.p. Bristol Jupiter passenger flying boats are almost completed in their hangars. They are designed to connect Britain, India, and Australia. They will carry fifteen passengers,_ besides a steward. One of their minor amenities is huge plateglass portholes, giving extensive views of the sea and the country beneath. We have arrived so near to air transport between England and tbe Commonwealth.