“ H.P’S"

Hokitika Guardian, 7 June 1918, Page 1

“ H.P’S"

OUR BIGGEST BOMBING MACHINES. (By Richard George.) It was at the time the German Fokker first made its appearance in English newspapers that stories of a huge new British aeroplane began to be whispered. A fellow journalist one day asked if I had any idea hmv many people had been up for a trial trip *in a very remarkable flying Machine. “ Six ?” I suggested dubiously. “ Twenty-one,” said lie, ■ with a superior sort of smile. It sonnded incredible, but it was a fact. Twenty-one people were stowed aboard a Handley-Page and taken to a height of more than seven thousand feet." I believe the trip is still a record, and that it marked one of the greatest aerial triumphs of the war is indisputable. It meant that, after months aud months of study, calculation, and experiment on tlie part of an inventor, Frederick Handley-Page, this country was first in the field with a really first-class big bombing machine. The Italian Caproni has still to fly; the German Gotha did not exist, except, perhaps, in nebulous paper form. Promise ha ring been translated into promise, the Admiralty took over the “ Handleys,” or “ H.P.s. for the Naval Air Service.

Now the Hun is just beginning to feel the full force of this invention. The “Handleys” are taking a lion’s share in the present, furious “ reprisal” bombing that the enemy has called down upon his head. Two years ago the “ H.P.s ” began to “ put tlie windup” the German fighting forces; now, provocation having passed all bounds, the Rhine towns are experiencing wliat it is like to have death and destruction tumbling upon them from the night skies. ***** Months ago, by reason of a pilot losing bis way in the fog, the Germans came into possession of a complete Handley-Page machine, and it is evident that they fashioned the Gotha upon this prize. But the “ H.P.” is a far better finished machine than the Gotlia. and it is also lather larger. Ihe machine’s length “ over all ” is seventy odd feet, and its wings fold back so as to occupy less space in shed or hangar. Two four-bladed tractor propellers driven by Rolls-Royce engines take the big bomber through the air at something more than seventy knots an hour “full out,’ and ip the event of one engine “conking” or being put out of action it is possible to fly on the other alone.

In the noso of the machine is a little cockpit, into which, through a tiny door, the observer wriggles to db-op his bombs or use his forward guns; behind the cockpit are the pilot’s and observer’s seats, side by side; and behind these are tho engines and the fuselage. The bombs are neatly tucked away out of sight ; the machine bristles with Lewis guns. Unless you are young and athletic you need a pair of steps, or a lope ladder, by which to climb into an “ H.P.,” and when you first put your head inside and look down the fuselage towards the tail you get an impression of a very long corridor which vanishes into nothingness. Fully loaded, a “Handley” weighs about four tons, and perhaps the most remarkable feat to its credit so far was to fly from England via France and Italy, bomb Constantinople, and bring itself and its five occupants safely back.