Air Enthusiasm in Germany

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 829, 25 November 1929, Page 10

Air Enthusiasm in Germany

NEW SERVICES PLANNED PACIFIC AND SIBERIA In Berlin cinemas an isolated ancl feeble clap greets the figure of President Hindenburg when he appears ■ on the. screen; more enthusiastic, but; just as isolated, applause is given to the more spectacular type of revolutionary in Russian films; stony, silence greets everybody else, not j excepting members of the Government at. conferences or ex-royalties , disporting themselves in studied bourgeois simplicity, writes the Berlin correspondent o£ the “Observer. But a picture of the steamer Bremen, of the airship Graf Zeppelin, or o£ the great flying boat DO X. the house rises. When a German car wins an international race, it is the car, not the driver, who is cheered on the films. Pictures of these great triumphs of German technique have formed part of news reels from the day tlie first rivet was driven. Those responsible for national propaganda have not been slow to realise the way the spirit of the nation was tending. Germany loves the Bremen as she loves Frederick tlie Great; national feeling toward the Graf Zeppelin, or her world flight is as heartfelt as the thankfulness of an Englishman at the King's recovery. it is typical of the nation that plans which a few months ago were very nebulous are already assuming definite shape and outline. The success of the Bremen in her first speed test — which is not taken as her full capacity—appears definitely to have quashed the original hopes of a regular transatlantic service of airships. The Bremen’s catapult for getting mails quickly into port, justifies the. claim of the liners for greater reliability, independent of weather conditions. The present German air plans, worked out by Captain Bruns, chief of a study commission, are concerned with a trans-Siberian service, on the one hand, and a trans-Pacific one on the other. For the former it is calculated that three airships would suffice, of a type larger than the Graf Zeppelin, the two to be in regular service from Berlin to Yokohama, the third fo remain in a hangar at Krasnoyarsk in readiness for any emergency. This would provide for four flights a month. Junctions on this route would be Leningrad (which would be important for passengers from Russia in Eprope,■ the Secession States and Finland) and Charbin for Asiatic Russia and North China. Used in connection with flying- boats from Shanghai, Tientsin and Hankow, a superlatively good FarEastern service could be organised for urgent mails and parcels and passengers. The meteorological conditions along this route are, according to present reports, as favourable as an airship can Aver exxrect to find. For the second route, the great flying boats of the type of the DO X. and the new Rolirbach Romar would be used. The trial flights of the latter took place recently, and more than justified hopes. The Luft Hansa has accepted both boats and ordered more of the same type. The route would be presumably from a Baltic Port to the Canary Islands. Cape Verde, and Pernambuco, and negotiations are said to have advanced so far that the necessary loan of £300,000 from the German Government can be guaranteed. This is considerably less than the £3,500,000 which the trans-Siber-ian project would require. Both types of boats are declared to be able to fly longer stretches than the Pacific route requires and to settle down upon the water with ease, no matter what seas are running. The saving of time over the Pacific would, it is calculated, make this service far more necessary than the originallyplanned transatlantic one, though more sea bases along the route will be required, running up the expenses of inauguration.

Already with this city’s peculiar love for the superlative, there is much talk of Berlin as the “Metropolis of Europe.” The city, it is claimed, is peculiarly fitted by her geographical postion to be the central station for trans-continental and world flights. It is only, runs the boast, through superior technical skill that Berlin has become the most important centre for the international news service by telephone and wireless. Advantages she alone can offer to the other air lines of Europe should give her the same importance in the air. The German Reich as a whole, the Federal State of Prussia, and the City of Berlin are willing to combine in enlarging the present airship base and mooring-mast at Staaken. There is a strong desire that the English airship lines to Egypt and Australia should be directed along this Staaken routes, but no definite information is as yet forthcoming as to what England has decided.

In regard to the financing of the trans-Siberian line hopes are placed on America. Everything depends upon the success of the present round-the-world trip, but a lawyer from Friedrichshafen is en route to New York, and there are reasons to believe that, once successful, one at least of Dr. Eckener’s dreams may be considered well within realisation.