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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 0722.PDF
258 FLIGHT. MARCH 9, 1939 Commercial Aviation The North Sea Service K.L.M.'s North of England line between Amsterdam, Don-caster, Manchester and Liverpool will be reopened on Monday, April 17. For this season there will be a revised time-table, which will provide direct connections with still more Continental destinations. Machines will leave Liverpool at 8 a.m.' and Amsterdam at 4 p.m. The landing at Doncaster will be optional. Stiffening the "B" A RRANGEMENTS have now been made for the "B" licence night-flying tests to be carried out over a number of alternative routes. These are Croydon-Lympne, Croydon- Southampton, Heston-Southampton, Heston-Lympne, and Lympne-Southampton. The candidates, however, will not have the opportunity of choosing their route, which will be determined by the Croydon traffic control, and the pilot will not be told of the decision until the evening of the night on which the test flight is to be made. Previously, the night-flying, test has been a somewhat simple affair between Croydon and Lympne, and the candi date has .been able to make a flight in one direction before night-fall and so obtain first-hand and accurate information about wind conditions. The Empire Base T HERE have been well-founded rumours during the past week that the projected site at Pagham Harbour may, after all, be that selected for the future and long-considered Empire air base. A survey of all the possible sites appears to have led to the definite decision that this particular scheme is the only feasible one. Pagham Harbour is three miles from Chichester and the surrounding country is almost entirely free from obstructions. Six centuries ago this harbour, with an area of 2,700 acres, was of considerable importance, but in the year 1875 it was drained and a wall built to keep back the Channel tides. In 1910 the sea broke through. Since then the area has been derelict. A start was made a year or so ago to reclaim the area again by the construction of defence works, and with their completion the harbour may again be filled to the depth of ten feet. The length of the waterway would allow a take-off for seaplanes a mile in length. There is a good deal of waste land surrounding the harbour which would be useful for the erection of buildings connected with the base, while the whole of the Selsey Peninsula is flat, and other areas near at hand could, if required, be used for airport development. Orkney Saga IN the Orkney and Shetland area the pilots get used to carry ing out difficult work in bad weather with little or no radio assistance, but few flights in that part of the world have been more remarkable than the one which was made on the night of February 28. Carrying a doctor who had been called to a case on the island of Sanday, Capt. J. A. Hankins left Kirkwall in the dark, flew over to Sandav, which, of course, is without radio or lighting facilities, and returned again the same night. Need less to say, the flight was a matter of tremendous urgency or the inevitable, if slight, risks would not have been taken. Actually the aerodrome at Kirkwall was, at the time, so water-logged that no cars could be got on to it to provide lighting. The pilot took off in the dark, and landed there on his return with the aid of the lights from one car which was standing at the gate on the edge of the field. At Sanday conditions were even worse, as the wind changed soon after the cars had been parked in position, and it took eight men to push each one off the rain sodden ground. It was, conse quently, impossible to move the cars soon enough to give the pilot the necessary warning, and Capt. Hankins brought off a landing across wind in a field which is only 350yd. long. Apart from all this, the weather was very bad indeed, with low cloud and heavy rain. Between Kirkwall and Sanday Capt. Hankins set his course with the aid of bearings which he took on the lighthouses at Copinsay and Auskerry. The machine concerned was a D.H. Dragon. THE WEEK (Concluded from. p. 257.) use them on an air service to Switzerland. The Swiss Air Authorities, very sensibly, I think, insist on approving (or disapproving) of any new type of aircraft likely at any time to fly to their country. Part of the duty for busy Met. boys at Croydon is to dash up to the roof at intervals and let loose gaily coloured balloons for purposes of cloud-height estimation. Visitors Mediterranean Mystery DURING the week-end before last it was reported that a civil machine had been lost while flying between Burgos and Genoa. The wreckage of this machine has now been found in the Alps to the north of Nice. It was a Junkers Ju.52 belonging, nominally at least, to the Spanish airline com pany known as Iberia, with its headquarters at Salamanca. All the occupants were killed, and since these, including the crew, appear to have been German nationalist volunteers, it is to be supposed that the Iberian Ju.52 was being ferried back to Germany. Evidently the pilot was flying blind in a snowstorm, was off course, and hit the high ground while descending. African Changes? T HE probability that additional services will shortly be put on the E'npire route to Durban was mentioned by Mr. T. Daish, of the G.P.O. Overseas Postal Service, at a Royal African Society's dinner held last week. He said that it had become clear at a fairly early stage that the provision of a third weekly service between this country and South Africa would be of considerable benefit. • One way of dealing with the problem was to extend the intermediate flying-boat service, which at present turns round at Kisumu, to Durban. Another scheme, which was now being examined, was that of taking the landplane service between Kisumu and Lusaka through to South Africa to join South African Airways' system. New Decisions AMONG the latest interim decisions given by the Air Transport Licensing Authority have been those for Isle of Man Air Services, Portsmouth, Southsea and Isle of Wight Aviation, Channel Air Ferries, and Western Isles Airways On the whole, the status quo remains; no very serious objec tions were raised to any of the applications, and only one 01 two demands remain unsatisfied. A number of interesting facts, however, arose during the course of the enquiries. For instance, the seasonal character of the Isle of Man Air Services' traffic was shown by figures for the month of February last year, in comparison with those for August; these were 523 against 5,333. Similar traffic figures were given by P.S and I.O.W.A., but in this case the changes from day to day were almost equally evi.dent. On August 4, 1938, 432 passengers landed and 342 embarked at Ryde, whereas on August 7, 73 passengers landed and <S; embarked. Of the total number of passengers carried by this company, the Portsmouth-Ryde service, which has been In far the most attractive of those operated by the company. took 133,4t4 out of a total of 166,184. An agreement has been reached between Channel Air Ferries and Portsmouth. Southsea, under which the traffic between Bournemouth and Ryde is to be pooled and the receipts divided; consequently, there were no difficulties between these two companies on the one route over which they were in competition. The only objections of importance in the three enquiries were made by the Manchester Corporation and North Eastern Airways to the applications of I.O.M.A.S. The former said that the services had been inadequate and demanded increased frequency, while the latter, in the case of the Isle of Man- Glasgow service, said that it was contrary to the public interest that licences should be granted only for summer ser vices except in cases where the service was required for purely holiday purposes. N.E.A. also asked that the time-table should be arranged to provide connections at Glasgow. The Leeds-Ronaldsway service would not, in any case, tie operated this year, since last year's figures were extremely disappointing. Western Isles Airways, as expected, obtained long-perio'i licences for their service from Glasgow to Campbeltown an I Islay, which has been operated since December 1, 1934, a"' for services between Glasgow, Tiree and the Outer Hebrides, which were started in 1935. The company also applied for, and received, a licence for an experimental service between Glasgow and Stornoway ; this will be granted when the Air Ministry licence for the landing ground at Stornoway has been obtained. AT CROYDON occasionally take exception to what they call these child ish games, or, alternatively, deplore so lamentable a hang' over from the carnival dance of the night before. " ine least that young man could have done," remarked a dear old lady recently, " was to have left his balloon at home, tied to the bed rail. And look at his nose, how red it is. Poor bloke, he was a life-long abstainer with a poor circu lation, and the morning was frosty. A. VIATOR-
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