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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1703.PDF
56o j^sfsm JUNE I, 1939 COMMERCIAL AVIATION THE YANKEE CLIPPER moored near two Empire boats at Southampton after her second Atlantic crossing. THE WEEK AT CROYDON "A. Viator" on the Whitsun Rush, Imperial's Pioneer Pilots, and Ways They Have in the Navy WE shall not get the Whitsun air-traffic figures yet awhile, but when we do I expect they will be of the bumper variety. On Friday of the hrliday Air France carried close on 250 passengers out from England, and on that day (and since) the blue skies have been darkened by hurrying Blochs. Le Touquet has been popular, and Le Zoute, too, the latter service being operated by North- Eastern Airways, whose line to the North has also been doing extremely well lately. To the North from Amsterdam and beyond there has been a considerably increased air traffic by K.L.M., largely of fruit and flowers ; whilst outwards from Liverpool, Man chester and Doncaster passenger traffic has been brisk. One aeroplane left England for Holland on the K.L.M. Northern route fully loaded with passengers for as many different European cities as Budapest, Vienna, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Swissair have been extremely busy as usual, and Im perials have run to capacity. K.L.M. and D.L.H. have maintained a steady average, but, in the main, public holidays do not affect these firms much, their passengers being largely business folk. You never see golden-haired young men in parti-coloured shoes and wearing carnation button-holes on these lines, nor grandmothers disguised as giggling debutantes. But to places like Le Touquet, especially at holiday times, you see all the sort of English who make foreigners so confident that the British Empire is cracking up rapidly. A short life and" a gay one would seem to be their motto. They are not very obviously gay, however; mixed hectic- cum-peevish is the usual aspect. As for a short life— perhaps one can agree with them there. Capt. Digby, of Imperial Airways, who used to be in the East on " boats," but who has been on the European lines for the past eighteen months or two years, is leaving the firm, I hear, to join the Air Registration Board. Good luck go with him. Which brings me to the point that old pilots never die, but merely fade away. Look back five years at the "Captains Courageous"—the men, I mean, who really founded the business and took all the early risks, who wrote the name Imperial Airways across the skies by getting through '' in most weathers, hanging ' on behind the odd prop or props turned by engines which might—or, again, might not, and quite frequently didn't. Some are doing sterling work in ground jobs of import ance, and others have gone elsewhere, but at the moment there are very few of the earliest Imperial Airways pioneers actually flying regularly on European routes, anyway. There is the perennially youthful Wilcockson, there is Jimmy Youell and there is Horsey. I can't think of a lot of others at the moment except O. P. Jones. Perhaps these, too, when the Amalgamation gets under way, will be offered ground jobs where their vast experience will be of untold value to the company. On the other hand, it is possible that, like true merchant skippers, they prefer to go on with the job they love until retirement. Naval discipline must be maintained, of course, but is it necessary to rename all sorts of quite good aerodromes, as if they were battleships? Lee-on-Soient, Ford, Worthy- Down and Donibristle, have actually, solemnly and with out a smile been re-christened H.M.S. Dcedalus, H.M.S. Peregrine, H.M.S. Kestrel and H.M.S. Merlin. That's the spirit! I suppose they'll splash salt and water about and yell " Heave ho! " at anyone who has had a bumpy trip, and at night, when the floodlights and pyrotechnics are at full blast, everyone will get that nice " all lit up " feeling. All I can says is, if you name a field after a ship you must expect the whole place to roll and plunge one of these wet nights, with half seas over the boundary fences and all the rest of the jovial seafaring stuff. There has been a big rush of air freight from Holland, especially recently. Strawberries and cut flowers, mostly, but quite a lot of bullion too. As well as the regular night freight machine of K.L.M. and a considerable amount on other services, there has been an extra freighter every night for a week and last Thursday there were two extra. G.A.P'.A.N. Master Instructor's Diploma A FTER a considerable period of exploratory enquiries, the G.A.P.A.N. has decided to issue a Master Flying Instruc tor's Diploma In brief, it will be awarded to instructors holding the G.A.P.A.N. Full Instructor's Certificate who have completed 2,500 instructional hours (or equivalent) during five out of eight years of flying within the British Empire, and who can show a clean record. We hope to make further reference to the Diploma.
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