PROTECTING PILOTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 374, 8 November 1932, Page 3

PROTECTING PILOTS

PROPOSAL TO SUPPLY 'PLANES WITH. HOMING PIGEONS. CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHTS. Though they admit that homing pigeons did wonderful work during the war, air pilots are not inclined to support the suggestion made in Wellington that pigeons should be carried on all machines doing long crosscountry flights, though one man said there were a few occasions on which pigeons might still be useful. The suggestion was that pilots should, take a pigeon or two with them and release them in the case of a forced landing in an out-of-tbe-way place, so as to get help. "I can thing of only one occasion in New Zealand in the last few years when a homing pigeon would have been of any use," a flying man said. "That was when one of the Marlborough Aero Club's 'planes made a forced landing at Ship Cove, in the Sounds, and was not located till next day. "In the early days of flying in New Zealand, when engines were not nearly so reliable as they are now, pigeons were extremely useful. On one flight somewhere in North Auckland, if I remember right, Mr. G. B. Bolt had two forced landings and sent ofl: a pdgeon each time." Nowadays, he said, forced landings were few and far between. The last airUrome at which a pilot had called usually lcnew where he was going, and if he did not turn up a search could easily be organised. If a pilot were forced down in bush country he would fprobably be h'ard" put to it to describe his exact position, anyway. An other man said that he thought pigeons might perhaps be taken on crossings of Cook Strait when the weather was too bad to allow a 'plane to get high up. If a pigeon were released by a pilot Tyhose engine had failed over the water it would probahly get back before the people at the airdrome had decided he was missing, and thus a boat would get to him sooner.