NEW AIR WONDERS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4727, 21 July 1924, Page 1

NEW AIR WONDERS.

SUPEB-SIANr AIKSHIPS. REFUELLING IN FLIGHT. With new giant aero-engines, novel wing devices, and developments in metal construction enabling machines to be designed of a size impossible hitherto, flying is turning a new page in its hostory. Not only will the new £1,000,000 aeroplane company blaze fresh trails, with bigger machines, along the 10,000 miles of the Empire airway to Australia, but the construction of super-giant airships will take lighter-than-air experiments into i fresh field. Among newest wonders are bombers; tremendously fast, with multiengined power-plants so arranged that the risk of a forced landing is practically eliminated. In these machines altitude flying , is called for which takes aerial warfare up to dizzy heights. So swiftly will these bombers fly that defensive plans become daily more difficult. Fighters now in hand, single-seaters with huge engines, are to rush up into the’ air almost vertically, like helicopters, and attain vast heights with a rapidity considered impossible a little time ago. WINGED TANKERS. . Even so, a growing school argues that' the offensive is the only defensive in the air. There is a new race between nations .to develop immensely long-range aeroplanes which, on the outbreak of. war, would strike swift blows at bases far within enemy territory. It is to increase range that experiments are being made in refuelling aeroplanes' in flight, petrol being passed down to them through* flexible tubes from winged “tankers.” The impending use of oil-burning acro-engines, consuming fuel at a few pence a gallon, brings romantic projects under review. Designs are being Considered for giantic airboats, developing thousands of horse-power and lifting loads in tons, to be employed in maintaining transport between inaccessible mines high up mountain slopes and seacoast' stations at the mountain- foot. Recent successes in metal construction enable flying boats to be planned of a size exceeding all previous records. Towards the end of the war designs were investigated for leviathans larger than any built previously. But such schemes had to be shelved, temporarily, because wooden spars of a size sufficient for their widespread wings were unobtainable. Now that the metal construction of moderate-sized machines has proved so satisfactory, the whole project is being reconsidered in a more favourable light, 'and huge experimental wing-spars, hollow-built, and combining strength with lightness in a way almost unbelievable, are actually being constructed and subjected to tests. EMPIRE ’PLANES. Construction is about to begin, following the receipt by>4he Air Ministry of tenders, o£ the first of a series of great multi-motored aeroplanes designed for the trans-Empire transport, at 90 miles an hour, of passengers, mails, and goods. Having one big Rolls Royce motor in their bows and other engine units on the' wings, some of these long-dis-tance machines are to be capable, even when fully loaded, of flying 2000 miles without alighting. This will mean that they will span the Empire from England to Australia without landing anywhere except on Empire soil.