ONE THOUSAND MILES AN HOUR

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 223, 9 February 1928, Page 3

ONE THOUSAND MILES AN HOUR

ROUND THE WORLD IN A DAY. What Sir Alan Cobham Says. “ I believe that it will be possible to fly round the world in a day, for all that is required is the ability to travel at 1000 miles an hour, the circumference of the earth being about 24,000 miles on any great circle ” (writes Sir Alan Cobham, Britain's greatest airman adventurer, in Tit Bits). “ If we fly against the rotation of the earth and start at noon on the eouator, going westward, the sun will remain directly above us all the time, and it will be noon at every place we pass over. To-day, after less than 20 years of practical aviation, we can fly at 300 miles an hour, so I do not consider the possibility of flying at 1000 miles an hour in any way a wild dream. “ As everybody knows, the greater the altitude the less dense becomes the atmosphere, and the thing which retards forward speed is wind or air resistance. That is why a racing machine is streamlined to the utmost. We have machines to-day that could fly at 1000 miles an hour provided we could get them to develop full power at an altitude of 12 miles. It requires as much power to drive a machine at 228 miles an hour at sea level at it does’at 1000 miles an hour at 12 miles altitude. “ I believe that young people living to-day will in time be able to fly from America to Australia in a day, and that they will be able to journey from New- Y rk to London overnight.”