GREAT SERVICE.

Waikato Times, Volume 119, Issue 19887, 16 May 1936, Page 25 (Supplement)

GREAT SERVICE.

MORE THAN 11,000 HOURS BY AIR. BOY’S AMBITION REALISED. One of the senior pilots of Imperial Airways, Captain H. J. Horsey, has. now spent more than 11,000 hours up in the air, and has flown nearly 30 different types of aircraft. As a boy Captain Horsey was intended for a naval career, thus carrying on the traditions of a family which had one of its members with Nelson on the “Victory” at Trafalgar. But young Horsey had other ideas. He was one of those boys who, instead of wanting to be an enginedriver, or to embark on a sea careei. had made up his mind to become an airman. And in 1916 he insisted upon joining the Royal Naval Air Service. Among Capt. Horsey’s recollections of the Great War are some thrilling experiences while on anti-submarine patrol. Submarines, he found, were fairly easy to spot from the air, even when submerged, but it proved difficult to bomb them accurately with the crude bomb-sights which was all that was available in those days. And aero-engines were not by any means so reliable, then, as they have become at the present time. This meant that pilots making long flights out to sea found their work dangerous owing to the risk of a power-plant failing suddenly. On one occasion Capt. Horsey had to spend many hours in the sea, clinging to a partially-submerged plane which had come down owing to engine-failure; and the rescuers arrived only just in the nick of time. Same as Any Transport. Capt. Horsey is just as at home at the controls of a big flying-boat as he is in the cockpit of a giant land-plane. He laughs and shakes his head when anyone suggests that there is anything risky about the work of an airline Captain nowadays. It was in fact Capt. Horsey who, not long ago, when asked on completing a flight whether he had met with any adventures up in the air, turned to his questioner with the reply:— . . “Do you ask an express tram driver whether anything exciting has happened to him on one of his routine runs? Of course you don’t. Why, therefore, imagine that a modern airline pilot, making daily trips in a big, reliable machine over routes he knows like the palm of his hand, and with a wonderful organisation of meteorology and wireless to help him, is likely to be confronted by a succession of thrills? The pioneer days of the airway are over. To-day our services operate to their schedules like boats or trains. Flying is no longer an adventure. It is just a high-speed method of travel.”