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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 0934.PDF
FLIGHT. SEPTEMBER 13, 1934. intercepted after they have crossed our coast, and the farther they have to fly inland the easier becomes the task of the defence. The move from Eastchurch arouses one melancholy thought. Is that most historic of all our aerodromes to be abandoned ? Is the place where Longmore, Samson, Gregory, and Gerrard were taught to fly by Cockburn, through the generosity of Frank McClean, to return to sheep pasture? Well, if it has to be so, Eastchurch has played a worthy part, and has served the country well. It has done enough for honour, and may be said to have earned its retirement. The bAodern Domesday AERIAL survey is a work which goes on steadily,and has become so thoroughly accepted as aL feature of modern life that now it rarely attracts much attention in the Press. Presumably, from the news point of view, one air survey is very much like another, and when the methods have once been described, there is little interest in covering the same ground again. Overlapping is necessary in the aerial photographs, but not in letterpress. Still, we never hear of an enterprise of the aerial survey companies with- out a renewed feeling of wonder at the great boon which the discovery of flying has conferred upon mankind. This is an age of maps. Nearly everyone travels by road when possible, and road travel means that good maps are the traveller's best friend. We all owe a very great debt to the Ordnance Survey, and to tl.ose map-makers who base their publications on the work of that survey. Yet maps compiled by ground methods, which are still the most reliable of all methods, and are indeed indis- pensable even when the aeroplane is called in to help, take an infinity of pains and time to compile. Man crawls slowly, and sometimes most uncomfortably, over the earth, with his vision strictly limited, laboriously noting all things on the earth. The aeroplane climbs aloft, and sees a whole tract in a flash. Its camera makes a permanent record, and all the data necessary for a general knowledge of the area are collected in a minimum of time. The saving in time and money is so great that no subsidy need be called for from the Government. It is a fcase where the aeroplane pays its way. On another page we comment on a scheme which is now being considered by revising the Ordnance Survey plans for the town ("built-up" is the fashionable phrase) areas of this country. Building is going on at such a desperate rate that an area may become unrecog- nisable after an absence of a few months. Nothing, it seems, but the aerial camera can enable the records to keep pace with the development; and it is a welcome sign of the times that the value of that method of work is now generally accepted with confidence. No. 501 (City of Bristol) (Bomber) Squadron in their Westland "Wallaces " (Bristol " Pegasus") flying overClifton Suspension Bridge. An article on the squadron appears on another page. (Flight Photo.)
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