FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1921
1921 - 0332.PDF
MAY 12, 1921 MISSING boat-trains and hustling through the air to makegood looks like becoming quite the most ordinary episode in life for Americans and other important folk. FromCherbourg last week another little " catch " of this nature is recorded by a Daily Chronicle correspondent, who relateshow an American passenger who missed the special boat train from Paris to Cherbourg, bringing passengers to jointhe "Olympic" for New York, hired a 'plane, and reached Cherbourg 90 minutes after his departure from the Parisaerodrome of Le Bourget. Moreover, the passenger— David Kleinhard, of New York—reached Cherbourg threehours before the arrival of the special train. HERE'S a real new-laid story from the Sheffield Independent : " A white Leghorn hen belonging to Mr. A. Thompson, Selby, has laid several eggs which resemble the envelope of an airship, with a blunt nose and tapering down. " He says that he got these eggs on several occasions. At first he took no notice, but on the last two occasions such eggs were laid on the day following the visit over the town of one of the Howden airships ! " EVIDENTLY there was some admirer of the brothers Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith around at the Tobacco Exhibition, recently opened by Sir Ross Smith, who was keen upon having a memento of their Australian flight, as one night last week, it is announced, the commemoration gold cigarette-case presented to Sir Keith was " lifted " from the show-case in which it was displayed at the Exhibition, to which it had been lent. The cigarette-case, it will be remembered, was engraved with the route of the flight from England to Australia, with the dates of departure and arrival, and the inscription " Presented by Rolls Royce-Vimy, Ltd." Some thieves are just too mean for anything. THE BERLINER HELICOPTER : Last week wegave illustrations of the Petroczy-Karman helicopter, and above is shown two views of another direct-liftmachine, invented by H. A. Berliner of Washington, U.S.A. The top photograph shows it in flight (on June10 last), and below is a close-up view. The first success- ful night of this machine, before the addition of thevertical stabilising fins and rudder, was made on November 11, 1919. THE Exhibition to be opened at the Manchester City Art Gallery of about 100 drawings—chiefly in water-colour— the work of Messrs. Richard and Sydney W. Carline, two British artists and brothers, sounds highly fascinating, and it is to be hoped thai, later on, London will have an oppor- tunity of seeing the collection. COMMISSIONED by the Imperial War Museum to make apainting tour in the middle East, the tour was carried out by aeroplane and motor-car early last year, extending fromPalestine to Persia. The idea was to" in this way obtain a pictorial "panorama" of the Moslem world. To selectthe subjects to paint, the artists flew over most parts of the country they were in. Mr. Sydney Carline to a Timescorrespondent thus describes their method :— " In the air one has to work very quickly, because of therapidly changing scene. Our plan, therefoie, was to fly to and fro over the selected view till one had sufficient detailsto complete the picture on landing. When one worked in the passengers' cockpit of the aeroplane the mapboard servedas an easel and one's water-bottle was strapped around one. " We preferred to work as passengers—though in Italy,where I had experience of painting pictures in the air as an official artist at the close of the War, I had sometimes topaint and control my Sopwith ' Camel ' at the same time. There, one of the difficulties was due to the extreme cold ata great height over the Alps ; in fact, the paint used to freeze on the paper as it was put on ; but in Mesopotamia,when flying over the deserts, we had the reverse experience ; during midsummer the heat tended to dry up the paint tooquickly. " Seen from the air, historic places seem to take on their more, permanent aspect, since one'B attention is not disturbed by the modern and incidental details. From the ground, the Sea of Galilee, for instance, is not so distinctive as from the air, whence one realises its curious pear-like shape and other unique characteristics." THEY seem at times to have had some lively experiences whilst engaged on their mission. The tour of the artists began in Palestine, and they were in Jerusalem at Easter, a period of festivals which crowds the city with pilgrims. On Good Friday Mr. Richard Carline was engaged on the drawing of Jerusalem, and, in order to lessen the danger of rioting, the aeroplane performed "stunts," to disperse col- lecting crowds. Northwards through Palestine the artists used a captured German motor-car for some of the way, until the car broke down in the swamps. Once when they were about 10 miles from Nablus (Shechem), they were stranded at nightfall, and had to find their way to the town in the dark on foot. Again, during a storm, which overtook them in the plain of Esdraelon, the car sank up to its axles, remind- ing one of Deborah's battle, in which this very plain became impassable to the chariots. Bands of Beduin marauders threatened them from time to time, even firing at them from behind cover during the daytime on several occasions, and, in particular, when they were in Jezreel (now the Arab village of Zerin), while they were painting on the site of Naboth's vineyard. The brothers carried out the Mesopotamian and Persian part of their programme from Basra as base. To reach Kerbelah (Meshed Hussein), some 20 miles south-west of Musseiyib, on the Euphrates, which is famous as the site of the tomb of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet, they traversed the desert route from Babylon. While painting, they were under armed native guard. The Moslems of Persia and Mesopotamia proved to be more fanatical and supersitious than those of Western Syria, and especially resented the drawing of pictures of mosques. They were also very shy about posing as figures themselves in the drawings. . ... . , . . ^, 332 I
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
