AIR RECORD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 288, 30 July 1932, Page 3

AIR RECORD

ENGINE TROUBLE FRUSTRATES OSCAR GARDEN'S ATTEMPT. CHRISTCHURCH, July 25. Engine trouble somewhere in the middle of Africa was the reason Mr. Oscar Garden, the young Christchurch airman did not succeed in his attempt to break the record for a flight from Cape Town to London at the end ofApril, a flight of which till now nothing has been known in New Zealand. "I was flying home when the engine crankshaft hroke right out in the blue' in the middle of 'Darkest' Africa. I was missing for nearly a week before I got to civilisation and had a pretty rotten time," he writes to his mother, Mrs. R. J .Garden, of Christchurch. In the forced landing that followed the engine failure the Spartan 'plane he was flying was badly knocked about and Mr. Garden was taking the engine and wings home with him to get them repaired when he wrote to his mother. He was tben thinking of going out to Kenya again. Mr. Garden toured South Africa with a flying circus, and when that was over he deeided to try to beat the Duchess of Bedford's time of 9a days for a flight to England. The three-seater Spartan 'plane, which had been used for joy-riding, for wing-walking and stunt exhibitions, was convert6d to a single-seater, the extra space being used for petrol storage. He made one start, but engine troube at Kimberley forced him to return to the Cape, where he spent three weeks overhauling his 'plane. He tried to keep his plans for another attempt secret, but the Johannesburg "Star" found out what h'e was doing and told South Africa about it. According to -the South African paper, Mr. Garden was so busy overhauling his machine that he had little time to sleep for the last two or three days before the flight. He intended to follow the Imp'erial Airways route, doing a lot of night flying to make up for th'e slow cruising speed, 80 miles an hour, of his 'plane. Mr. Garden first came into prominenee when he traded in a secondhand motor-car for a second-hand Moth 'plane at Selfridge's big department store in London, and set out :or Australia, making the flight in ixcellent time,