BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

Evening Star, Issue 22441, 11 September 1936, Page 2

BENEATH THE WINDSOCK

by Gypsy moth

TEN-MILE CEILING. An all-metal monoplane, _ believed capable of climbing 10 miles high) is to be handed over to the Air Ministry for tests within the next few weeks (state! an exchange). Built by tne Bristol Aeroplane Com** pany, the machine has, for months, been one of the Air Ministry’s secrets. This week meagre details of its design wore allowed to be revealed. The plane will undoubtedly break the world’s altitude record—47,3B6ft, at present held by Italy—but this is not its main purpose. After its first tests, the craft is to be sent up to see how an aeroplane behaves in the rarefied atmosphere miles above the earth’s surface. If the promise of scientists is fulfilled, it will eventually be possible to send up a machine which will fly at fantastic speeds through the “ thin air ” and which will be able to reachNew York from London in four or five hours. . ■ The new Bristol machine will be able to settle many that have arisen from the data provided by stratosphere balloonists in the last two or three years. The craft is fitted with a special Pegasus engine. It has supercharging equipment more complete than ever used before. This will enable tbs engine to “breathe” at the tremendous altitudes, at which it will fly. REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT. It is only 31 years since Orville Wright made the first controlled flight in a power-driven aeroplane,_ a flight which lasted 58sec and in which _ a distance of 850 ft was covered. It is only 26 years, since Louis Bleriot made the first Channel crossing; 15 years since Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith made the first England-Australian flight in 27 days (stated the ‘ Southland Daily News’ recently). Yet last year in the great London-Melboume air race the 9,000 miles to Darwin were covered in. less than two and a-half days. And to-day the aeroplane has entered into many spheres of transport and _ into many other phases of man’s activity.It car Hes mails and passengers; in New Guinea it has transported live stock and machinery. Used by explorers it has traversed the Poles. It has brought London, or more correctly, soon will bring London within “ a fortnight of anywhere in the Empire.” . It is put to other and more*'deadly uses. Almost 23 years ago the British Army entered the Great War equipped with one motor transport vehicle. As for aeroplanes, they were very few, very far between, and very, little! thought of. This year the aeroplanes helped largely in Italy’s conquest of Abyssinia; Britain keeps the tribes in her scattered territories disciplined by this means. And every Power of consideration is equipped with a large air force for purnoses of aggression or defence. Britain alone spends £49,000,000 annually on her Air Force. DEFENCE FROM THE aTr. Mr Stanley Baldwin was asked in the House' of Commons whether he had modified his previous opinion to the effect that there was no effective defence against bombing from the air. The reference was to a speech made more than two years ago. He said it was an illusion to suppose that national safety could really be determined by the number of war aeroplanes each country might possess. In thick weather, if not in clear, no amount of military aeroplanes could defend great cities from devastating air attack. “ I think it well for the man in the street to realise,” he continued, “ that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through. . . . The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”