AIRCRAFT IN WAR

Levin Daily Chronicle, 10 September 1918, Page 4

AIRCRAFT IN WAR

BRITISH PLANE HOLDS RECORD. I !' Yet this performance is not to be compared with that of a British air- 1 piano which last fall flew from Lon- • don to Salonika, making eight stops en | route, a distance of 2000 miles, the longest point to point flight on record." The stops on this flight were Paris, j Marseilles, Turin, Pisa, Rome, Taranto, and eastern shore of the Adriatic and Salonika. The remarkable feature of this flight, especially in its bearing on the commercial possibilities of modern aircraft was the weight carried. This • included two officers, four mechanics, a spare motor, three spare landing wheels, two reserve propellers, and a complote outfit of tools and other spare parts, representing a weight of something over three-quarters of a ton. j This particular type of British ma- ! chine has a wing spread of ninety- | eight feet, a length of sixty-five feet and is twenty feet high. It is propelled by two twelve-cylinder motors, each . rated at 280-h.p. In charge of an American pilot, one of these airplanes a short time ago climbed to a height • of 718 ft with twenty-one passengers aboard, a record performance. The ability to carry a ton load of bonVbs for a reasonable distance is, therefore, not to bo doubted. In one of the recent raids on Paris, participated in by a fleet of some sixty German machines of the type know as Gothas, th c French brought down j four, and with them fifteen men.' This i indicates that in addition to a half- ! ton <sr' more of explosives the Gothas carry a crew of four men each. A French authority on aviation has just given some interesting facts^ concerning these captured German airplanes, which he says are a new type developed to offset the promised fleets of American aircraft. They have two sis-cylinder motors -of 260 h.p., a wing-spread of eight-six feet, and an average speed of between eighty and ninety miles an hour. Of equal interest is a report recently published in English newspapers to the effect that the Germans i.ave developed a new airplane of great size. This is said to be a triplane, with six motors and able to carry two or three 1000-pound bombs. POSSIBILITIES IN TRAFFIC. Many more facts could be presented, but the foregoing should serve to establish the present status of human flight,