CAPTAINS OF THE AIR

Evening Star, Issue 22460, 3 October 1936, Page 3

CAPTAINS OF THE AIR

A VISIT TO THE PILOTS’ROOM MEN WHO HAVE MADE FLYING HISTORY (By a London Coiuiespondent.) From outside one hears an intermittent drone of engines. Inside, as one sits in the comfortable, dark-pannelled room, one looks up at walls which bear portraits of pilots who have written their names on flying history. This room is the pilots’ room at the London airport, Croydon—a room known and talked about wherever airmen meet throughout the world; a room as famous, from the viewpoint of a captain of the air, as that captains’ room at Lloyd’s where men of the sea assemble. Around you sit airmen who know their skyways just as sea captains know the ocean routes. Pilots stroll in who have just brought their craft to earth from flights which began only a few hours earlier far across Europe. Others, deeply tanned by tropical suns, are homo on leave from one or other or tlie Empire routes, and are eagerly exchanging views and experiences. Foreign pilots mingle with those of British airlines. An aerial league of nations is this room. The camaraderie of the air, ignoring frontiers or restrictions, binds in the bonds of friendship—a friendship irrespective of nationality—all those who traverse the highways of the sky. Great air captains of to-day, sitting in friendly groups, glance up at the pictures of those pioneers who, in the infancy of air transport, were establishing the _ fine traditions which animate the pilots now operating oh the world’s flying routes. Unique is the picture gallery of pioneers which one sees on the walls oftlsi pilots’ room.. It tells a personal story of air transport from its earliest days. Here, for example, is Captain Lawford, who. 17 years ago now, piloted the first British passenger plane on the daily service .to Paris. Here, too, is that pioneer in scientific instrumental flying, the late Captain P. L. Barnard. Here, also, are two aerial adventurers, superb pilots both of them, who vanished while on early Atlantic flights—Colonel Minchin and Captain Hinchcliffe. And here is Lieutenant Shaw, who made history with a magnificent bad-weather flight during the first week of London-Paris flying; also that pioneer who blazed long-dis-tance air trails which are being flown commercially to-day, Sir Alan Cobham. Sitting round you in the pilots’ room are airmen who were the friends and colleagues of early pilots who flew in the era before our airlines were organised scientifically—in those days when every flight was apt to be an adventure, and when landing grounds were being hacked out of forests to open up routes which now span the Empire to India, Africa, China, and Australia. Here, for instance, is that well-known veteran of the air, Captain Dismore. Cheerful and smiling, and alwavs completely unassuming, Captain Dismore has been flying regularly for 23 years. He was handling tiny low-powered planes away back in pre-war days. He flew throughout the Great War, and has personal recollections of that early phase in hostilities when pilots were fighting up in the air with rifles and revolvers. Captain Dismore sfit_ at the controls of some of those hastily-con-verted war planes which, carrying passengers instead of bombs, inaugurated post-war civil flying between England and the Continent. And now to-day, with all the wonderful experience to draw upon, he flies as _ commander of great multi-engined airliners, which dwarf to insignificance the tiny planes with which our commercial air era began. ’ _ No wonder that passengers travelling' by Imperial Airways'—and more especially those who may be flying for the first time—say that the men who sit at the controls of the company’s airliners inspire them with such a feeling of confidence. Eight of the pioneer captains of Imperial Airways nave, between them, now flown a total distance approaching 10,000;000 miles. Seven veterans are Captains O. P. Jones, F. Dismore, A. B. H. Youell, H. H. Horsey, H. H. Perry, L. A. Walters, and W. Rogers. _ To talk to any one of them in the pilots’ room is to realise that Britain’s mercantile _ air service is being founded on lines just as admirable, and as enduring, as that of our mercantile sea service. These pilots do not care to talk about themselves. They prefer to talk -about civil flying as a whole. They are concerned not with their own personal exploits. They desire to sink their own identity in the general progress of the movement which they have at heart. It is their, endeavour to convince the public, by the smooth precision of their flying, that air travel has left the era of experiment far behind, and is now at the world’s service, day in and day out, as a swift, dependable, everreacly method for expediting transport of passengers, mails, and freight.