THE NEWEST FLYING WONDER.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 July 1921, Page 3

THE NEWEST FLYING WONDER.

(By llairy Harper). Another air dream has just \V e have a machine now—a practical machine—in which are combined with extraordinary ingenuity the features of tiie aeroplane, the seaplane, and the flying-boat. ' -

It can ascend from or descend on land. It can rise from or alight on water. It can start a flight from the land and finish it on the sea; or it can soar from the sea and fly to some aerodrome inland. It is, in fact, amphibious. with the hull of the flying-boat and the wheels of the aeroplane—these latter drawing up out of the way when the craft is about to alight on water.

What a successful amphibian can do was show a very strikingly to some privileged spectators a little time ago. The doors ol a shed near the seashore opened suddenly and one of these strange hybrid craft trundled out under its own (tower, ran down the beach on its wheels, breasted the waves with its boat-hull, and was soon moving off like a ship across the surface of the

I Then, increasing its pace till its wings exerted their lifting power, it rose, dripping, from off the lace of the water and flow away swiltly through the air. Presently, returning, it glided down gracefully till it. rested On the water again, then, sweeping shorewards, it climbed up the beach like some extrnoidinary living thing and vanished with a final roar of its engine within its shed.

A strange, uncanny machine! Yet one with the most amazing possibilities. You can start from i} land air-station such as Croydon and about a couple of hours later—for a high-powered amphibian is very swift--you van glide down, to alight gracefully on the Seme in the heart of Paris. Returning, you can lower your wheels below vour hull and alight just like any ordinary ’plane at the Croydon station, or vou can come on straight up to town and put vour passengers down on the ,-iver within a stone’s throw of Westminster Bridge. . Land or water, sea or river—it »» the same to you when you are in an amphibian. That is why the Dominion Prime Ministers, on their coining visit to us, are expected to take such an interest in tlds special type of aircraft A machine which, besides passing at 100 miles an hour through the air, can manoeuvre with equal facility on land or water, may, in districts overseas, solve many a knotty transport problem.