AIR PARADES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 May 1938, Page 7

AIR PARADES

MASSED FORMATION FLIGHTS IN BRITAIN

MORE THAN 400 PLANES TAKING PART. VISITS TO MANY CENTRES. AND TOWNS.' (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 21. More than 400 aircraft will visit 170 cities and towns early next week, when ten mass formation flights will be carried out by the Royal Air Force. These flights will be an advance demonstration of the part to be played by the Air Force on Empire Air Day next Saturday, when 58 Air Force stations and many civil aerodromes will be at home to the public. One of the parades will consist of 56 fighters, which will take a course around the outskirts of London. Others will consist of bombers, and two ofthese will include London in their course. There will be 60 bombers in a string, and London will be reached after a long flight over the west of England. The second string to visit London will be 42 twin-engined Handley Psfge Harrows and Heyfords. Meanwhile the biggest procession of all will be touring the western Midlands. It will include four types of bombers and 80 aeroplanes—Boulton and Paul Sidestrands, Hawker Hinds, Fairey Battles and Bristol Blenheims, all of which will be arranged in Vshaped flights in a line astern.

Further north there will be visits by 12 Hawker Hinds and 18 Bristol Blenheims, flying in separate formation to Lincoln, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Chester, Crewe, Shrewsbury, Stoke-on-Trent, Worsop, Mansfield, Newark and Grantham. The duty of showing the flag in the northeast will be undertaken by 45 Armstrong Whiteworth Whitleys apd Handley Page Harrows.