THE BIG FLIGHT.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1919, Page 5

THE BIG FLIGHT.

SPLENDID PROGRESS,

POULET NEkRING INDIA. By Telesraph.—Press Assn.—Copyrlfiht. Received Nov. 11, 7.40 p.m. ,f i; London, Nov. 10. Lieutenant Etienne I'oulet (who is attempting a flight from Paris to Australia) is reported to have left Bunder Abbas for Karachi, and following the postal route, he has passed Chahbar.— Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.

[Bunder Abbas is the seaport town of the province of Kerman on the Persian Gulf. Karachi is the capital of Sindh province in the Bombay Presidency, and is the nearest port in India to the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Captain Andrew Lang, of the Royal Flying Corps, who won the world's record for altitude, gives some interesting facts regarding Poulet, the Frenchman, to the Sydney Sun. "Early in 1014," he says, "when Poulet was chief test pilot to the Caudron sheds, he was sent to Vienna to take part in a great aeroplane competition. He was flying a 45 h.p. An-zani-engined Caudron biplane, and greatly to the chagrin of the German and Austrian authorities he carried everything before him, beating the very best of their more powerful types. As the whole of the French Flying Corps received its tuition on the Caudron biplane, and as this type of machine was being built by other flrm3 under contract with the Caudron company, you can easily grasp what an enormous amount of flying Poulet must have "done in testing every machine. It was the brilliant Jules Vedrines, chief experimental test pilot to the French Flying Corps, who introduced me to his greatest friend, Poulet, at the Caudron sheds. Vedrines mentioned to me then that at the termination of the war he was going to fly_ round the world, via Australia, on a Caudron biplane. Unhappily, last May, this greatest of cross-country pilots, Vedrines, was killed while flying from Paris to Rome, and it hits consequently been left to Poulet to make the ■attempt to carry out Vedrines' great ambition. If any man can do it, Poulet should. One advantage is that he is using the make of machine which lie has handled ever since he 'legan flying at about 18 veaTS of age. He is now 27."]