THE GREAT BRITISH BIPLANE.

Taihape Daily Times, 11 February 1918, Page 6

THE GREAT BRITISH BIPLANE.

The great Handley-Page biplane which fiew in eight , stages from England to Constantinople and bombed tne Goeben carried five men, and al. though she bore as well their baggage and bedding, spare parts and oil, bombs and machine-guns, and spare propellers, she carried them easily. It could, says an expert, have crossed tne Atlantic in 20 hours. The great Rolls-Royce engines nev-: er faltered. They brought the airmen to Salonika, a nd thence to a base “somewhere near Turkey.” Then the

great adventure began, xne and bedding and spare parts vere left behind. The pilot and a passenger (oquadron.Commander K. S. Savory aiid Flight-Eleutenant H. TSacClelland sat in front, and the engineer (Engin- / eer-Lieut. T. Rawlings) was free to w r alk his narrow cabin and -watch above and below from the machinegun platforms.

They flew 250 miles in about three hoars, and then beneath the spreading wings saw the lights of Constant!, noule and all the vessels, including the Goeben, a blaze of light. Down they came and loosed a salvo of bombs at the battle-cruiser. They circled raid dropped another salvo and then made along the Bosphorus where they sought out the German headquarters ship and bombed her. Amid a hail of Turkish shells they found the Turkish War Office. Accoarding to a Turkish communique at the time this was “not destroyed,” “but,” said one of our airmen, “the bombs weighed 1121 b, and we were there for half an hour.”

A Daily Mail representative was told by an aeroplane builder that a British aeroplane carrying a pilot, 6 passengers, and 7001 b of luggage has flown from Hendon to Paris in two hours, and that we have machines to carry 30001 b of bombs (nearly a ton and a-half). “Then why not bomb Berlin?” “That is qute possble,” said the con. structor, “but it is not my department

—but something big may happen

soon.”