Making Air History

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 133, 26 August 1927, Page 3

Making Air History

Lines to Encircle World

Luxury Planes and Airships

IMPORTANT and far-reaching results are alreadv following 1 recent triumphs in long-distance flying. T^ e immense interest aroused by the feats of Lindbergh, smberlin, and others, is now rendering very much easier e task of those who aim, link by link, to extend our existing au-lines until they provide several alternative routes round the world.

special significance in » ;*« regard have just reached British air circles. One concerns transatlantic commercial flying. In the recent ocean flights the airplanes employed have been so laden with fuel that any attempt to carry a commercial load would have been impossible, says Harry Harper, the authority on airplanes, in the Melbourne “Herald.” But what is now to be done is to carry out an exhaustive series of experiments in America, France, and Germany, with a view to increasing the load-carrying capacity of very large long-range commercial airplanes. The most definite step forward lies in the fact that Professor Hugo Junkers, the famous German aero-scientist, has now actually begun to assemble, at Dessau, the parts of a vast monoplane flying boat intended solely for practical, full-scale trials in the problem of non-stop ocean flights with passengers. The size of this enormous 4,000 horse-power machine may be judged from the fact that, on short flights with a moderate fuel load, it will be able to lift the weight of 100 passengers in addition to that of its working crew of 12. Even when burdened with petrol sufficient for a nonstop flight across the Atlantic from Hamburg to New York, it is expected that the machine will carry 20 or 30 passengers. Accommodation for an inaugural ocean flight which it is proposed to make this autumn is already being allocated to certain prominent American and German business men. CUTTING DOWN FUEL WEIGHT The main problem under investigation, so far as giant heavier-than-air machines are concerned, is to lessen their structure weight wherever possible, and to develop power plants which will use a minimum of fuel. One of the most encouraging points is that already, to-day, with a moderate-sized single-engined plane, petrol can be carried sufficient for the machine to fly 4,400 miles without alighting, carrying in addition to its fuel-load the weight of two men. Until recently it was thought that the factor of sheer structure weight would go up in a prohibitive way when the construction was undertaken of very large airplanes, and that it would be impossible to make them really commercial propositions. But already the researches in Germany of Professor Junkers, and in France of MM. Breguet and Bleriot, are showing how, by various simplifications in design and construction, it is becoming possible to throw a new and very much more favourable light on this vital question of the structure weight of super-giant load-carrying airplanes. HUGE U.S. DIRIGIBLE In the meantime, while these questions are being probed in the matter of airplanes and flying-boats, the wave of enthusiasm in America, following upon the recent United States Atlantic flights, is enabling plans to be developed rapidly for what will be the world’s largest passenger-carrying airship. Our two new British dirigibles, it will be remembered, are to contain 5,000,000 cubic feet of gas; but this vast American machine, the designs for which are already far-advanced, is to be a 6,500,000 cubic-feet vessel. The internal accommodation of the machine is to be on a scale of greater luxury than in any previous flying craft, and the intention is to use this liner of the sky, when completed, in transatlantic flights between America and Europe. Such structural schemes, now being pushed ahead so energetically, bring nearer every day the actual operation of commercial airways which will not only span continents, but girdle regularly the wide expanses of vast oceans. It is now known that the German Lufthansa Company, working in conjunction with the Russian Deruluft organisation, proposes to open this summer for passenger as well as mail traffic, the trunk air-route, which has

already been thoroughly surveyed, between Berlin, Moscow and Tokio. The significance of this great avove-land route, apart from its traffic-carrying potentiatities, is that it is intended that it should form a vital link in a high-speed aerial wonder-way which, far sooner than many people think, will encircle the globe completely by night and day flying. AERIAL “WAGON- LIT” It is with a view to establishing a connection with this Berlin-Tokio line that experimental transatlantic flights are to be made with the new giant American airship. This vessel will fly from New York to a mooring-mast at Berlin, and passengers will then be able to change from the airship to a very large all-metal airplane—a sort of winged “wagon-lit,” equipped with every travelling comfort—in which an air journey, in stages, will be accomplished between the German capita] and Tokio. For the next world-encircling stage, from Tokio across the Pacific, to San Francisco, it is now proposed to investigate the technical features of a multi-motored seaplane service, as well as a line of airships; and, once this trans-Pacific link is established, travellers will find already functioning an airplane line by which they will be able to rush at 100 miles an hour across the American continent to New York, changing there to a Europebound airship which will time its flights to connect with the arrival of planes from San Francisco arid other great cities. BERLIN TO SPAIN An important aerial milestone in Europe is to be the opening, next month, of a main line running from Berlin through to Madrid. For this service, a new type of three-engined luxury plane, fitted with a buffet and all facilities for serving meals and refreshments in mid-air, is to be employed; and the stewards and waiters travelling on these large machines, in addition to providing passengers with refreshments, are being trained to point out prominment landmarks and beauty-spots as the great craft rush above the changing panorama which will be visible from the outlook windows. Long-range air passengers, on arriving at Madrid, will be able, if they so desire, to change to a swift taxiplane for a flight to Seville. Here, already in construction, is the base of the airship line which, this autumn, is to begin South Atlantic flying from Spain to South America. FUTURE OF AIR TRAVEL Every portent is now favourable for the forging of air-links stretching not for hundreds but for thousands of miles. It is realised that it is in such long routes, passing unimpeded over all sorts of natural obstructions, that the real scope lies for modern passenger-carrying aircraft. On comparatively short lines, bearing in mind the delays occasioned by motor-car connections between cities and outlying airdromes, the speed of the airplane has hardly time to make itself sufficiently apparent. But given a long route, extending across a continent, or passing high above a wide stretch of ocean, and the sheer pace at which the flying machine moves will enable it, to reduce journeys of weeks to days, or those of days to hours. The future of flight, in fact, lies not in competition over short routes with ships and trains, but in immense world journeys bridging distances which, at present, can only be traversed by dint of tedious? long-sustained, time-wast-ing earth transport.