OCEAN FLYING HAZARDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3854, 6 October 1928, Page 4

OCEAN FLYING HAZARDS.

ORDEALS OF THE PACIFIC'. The hazards of ocean flights which have conquered so many brave men during the last decade, have exercised the mind of the civilised world for years. Probably no subject has claimed such universal interest. Many have gone to their doom leaving no word of what overwhelmed them, and the other brave men who have survived have not, as a rule, recorded their dangers and difficulties in detail or in a manner that can be clearly 'understood by the non-technical mind. It has been left to Squad-ron-Leader Kingsford Smith and Flight-Lieutenant Ulm to do so in their book describing their transpacific flight, an advance copy of which has arrived from the Sydney publishers, Messrs Penlington and Somerville. WIDEN WORRIED AND WJHY. Their method is not the text book style. They simply take the reader along with them through sunshine and storm, through the clear calms of the lower air levels and the blinding squalls which demanded the rapid elimbing of the mountains of vapour, - explaining when they were worried and why. As has been said by their present navigator, “the Tasman is always the Tasman,” and some further knowledge of the perils they have already survived will enable one fully to appreciate the possible ordeals of their homeward flight. “A tall ship and a star to steer by,” may satisfy the sailor when the voyaging lust comes upon him, but he who flies the air that never will be charted must have the soul of a scientist as well as the heart of a lion. ~ ■ ' FUEL CONSUMPTION. “Had our estimates been made on our flying power in still air the discrepancy would have been staggering and our chances of reaching Suva remote.” In this brief - sentence the pilots sum up all their researches in the matter of heavy loading, all their anxieties over the question of “gas” which assailed them during every “leg” of their flight. On page after page there is reference to “gas” in relation to .distance. This, for instance, in reference to the Honolulu-Suva flight tells more than the Vernes ever dreamed: “In our attempt at flying low under the raging storm we did not meet with .success. The lower we went the lower dropped the impenetrable curtains of cloud. There was nothing for it but to start to climb again. As we pulled up and ; the motors flung themselves into the steady haulage, we again thought of the gas. It was the sort of thing 1 that played the very hell with consumption. Just before dawm came another of those tense conferences about gas. Again the estimates clashed. Kingsford Smith thought that after all the dodging of the rain squalls the gas would fail us just before Suva. Yet Ulm was the optimist. Actually we had about seven or eight hours’ gas. Yet there was just a disturbing doubt whether we were on the right course. So we pondered over gas and steering.” If that is not restraint, what is? WASTED DAS.

Two pages on we note “Our rosy hopes of making Suva faded a little.” Now we come to the meeting, some 550 miles from Fiji, with the south-east trade wind, which was “neither sociable nor friendly. They estimated the fight of the night had cost them 40 gallons of petrol which represented no progress. It was the cost of climbing and dodging. The point was, “Where were we? How was the °as?” The heavens having been obscured they were relying solely. on Lyon’s dead reckoning. But night that had involved circles and “How far had we drifted in the climbing, banking and gliding?” None could hazard a guess. Conceivably they might have been 100 or 200 miles off the course, in which event the gas would have been insufficient to make Suva. While waiting for a chance to make a “shot” in the murk of dawn the cheerful navigator sent a message to the cockpit announcing that he and Warner had decided to have Kingsford Smith elected President of the United States. His cheerfulness was rewarded when some time later he got a “shot” and found they were where they hoped they were.

Another “ray of sunshine” was to come. They started the handpump to raise gasoline. At first the gauge showed nothing. , “This looks pretty bad ,” they agreed. One can imagine with what eyes they watched what was hap'pening in the glass flue of the pipe. “The spirit crept along the flue. 'We stopped pumping and started again. Once more bubbles and then a consistent flow. Yet the gauge showed less than zero. The course was right, the gas was right, but where was Fiji 1 ?” So do the pilots indicate something of the hazards of fuel. EARTH INDUCTOR COMPASS. Leaving Fiji Lyon found the earth inductor compass, “probably the most valuable instrument we carried,” out of action. -It was their one mistake. They had forgotten to oil it. They flew to Aus.tralia by the steering compass, but because of the failure of the earth induction instrument they struck the Australian coast 110 miles oft their course. As to “blind flying,” of which they had more than their share, for which they had been prepared, seeing that their watchword had been “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” other hazards are

presented. “If our senses told us that we were banking steeply and we began to feel a heaviness in the head that we believed came of a lurch to one side, we had to disregard them. No wavering was permissible. We had to be ruthless with our own senses. Often we might have a feeling that we were dropping steeply. But the altimeter there in the weak light before us declared emphatically that we were climbing, and by no possible calculation could our sensation of descent be supported. Thus we plunged on through the dead blackness, flouting our senses and disregarding our own brains.” What of this hazard —the automatic response of the hand to a brain that is misled? DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME. Through rain and lightning they fly. It is a thrilling story broke* by the reflection: “Were the magwatoß thoroughly wet?” These reflections “were not reassuring.” a gloomy line of thought.” Then as to actual flying skill. “We concentrate on the stiff task of keeping the ship level, easing the strain as much as we could in the bumps, keeping the engines moving as lively as possible, and, in short, keeping the ’plane in the air. It was just a case of hang on and keep going oil the reasonable assumption that the atrocious succession of rainstorms and raking winds could not last for ever.” If ever there was an ocean flight in which luck played no part it was that of the Southern Cross aeross the Pacific. Every hazard possible to a three-engined ’plane not designed for ocean flying w«te presented and was surmounted because apart from the personal qualifications of the pilots and crew, each had been weighed beforehand in the scales of science.