Transatlantic Air Terminal

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 48, 27 February 1939, Page 3

Transatlantic Air Terminal

NEWFOUNDLAND AIRPORT, Newfoundland— Coincident with the publication of the details of the giant land and sea planes that the United States and Great Britain have developd for trans-Atlantic service, a giant airfield in some respects the -world’s largest, coupled with a parallel seadrome base, has been literally hacked out of the forested wilderness of northwestern Newfoundland. The airport is part of a cautious thorough-going British policy that neither land nor sea facilities shall be found wanting if future air development indicates that the land-plane is superior to the flying boat for trans-oceanic service, or vice versa. For this giant airfield is 49 miles away from the Botwood marine air base in Newfoundland from which the flying boat tests of last year were made by both Pan American and Imperial Airways. In the matter of paved runway area this airport definitely eclipses all others. It has four huge runways, three of which are each 4,500 feet long and GOO feet wide, while the main runway is over 4,800 feet long and 1,200 feet wide. All four runways are paved in asphalt over their entire area. For purposes of comparison it may be noted that each of the three secondary runways is about as large as the entire paved area of any American airport. In its beacon assembly there is a rotating beacon which projects ‘ two beams of light, one clear, one red, in opposite directions. The clear beam has an estimated candlepower of 11,000,000, as against a common average of 2,000,1)00 in use elsewhere. The candlepower of the beam is 3,500,000. The beacon’s effective range in normal weather is about 85 miles. Located directly above the rotating beacon is a neon beacon, which flashes as the main beacon revolves, thus giving the assembly its particular characteristic. The combination of the two beacons is by far the most powerful assembly on any airport anywhere. The Control Boom is located in a glass-enclosed tower atop the Administration Building. Seated at the control desk, the Control Officer has in front of him every known ground aid to navigation. From this nerve centre of the airport a multitude of connecting cables go down to the main switchboard in the transformer room located on the ground floor of the Administration Building. The trans-Atlantic traveller of 1940 from New York will take off from a near-by airport in a high-speed landplane carrying some 30 passengers and fly to Newfoundland Airport in less than five hours, where he will join Canadian fellow travellers who have just arrived from Montreal in a similar type plane. They will transfer to a giant trans-

Atlantic air liner, ■which will land them at Foynes 10 to 12 hours later, and there the iinal transfer will be made to a land plane for direct connections to London, Paris, Berlin, and other Eurobean centres. New York to London in 20 hours!