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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1790.PDF
JUNE 8, 1939 Jf0sm COMMERCIAL 589 AVIATION COLOMBIAN CENTRE : A scene, pictorial rather than educative, at Man- gar airport, Barran- quilla, which is the base for the opera- tions of the Colombian national company SCADTA. On the right of the picture is one of the four Boeing 247s used by the com pany. THE WEEK AT CROYDON 11 A. Viator's " Transport Commentary : The Ensigns Again : Whitsun Traffic : False Alarm : A Slight Delay : Making It Difficult THE first of the modified Ensign-class liners should be delivered to Imperial Airways before these words are printed, and thereafter they are to be handed over at the rate of one a week. They will have a better take-off, with more power and constant-speed air screws, and the controls are said now to be nicer. We shall know more about it when one of the Senior Imperial pilots has flown the machine through some really rough weather. There is news, too, that some of the Ensigns are to be fitted with Wright Cyclones, which gives more power even than the improved Tiger. Flight hinted at this some months ago. The change could, I believe, have been made within a very short time of the grounding of the machines and one wonders why it wasn't. Two or three Cyclone-engined Ensigns, avail able in time for the peak season of air traffic, including Easter and Whitsun, would have been more valuable to Imperial Airways than the whole thirteen delivered just when things arc slacking off. Who, I wonder, is to com pensate the operating company for the very great loss oi trade ? One or two interesting Whitsun figures have come to hand. On the Paris line for the period May 25 to 30, Imperial Airways, with 39 aircraft journeys, carried 644 passengers to Paris and, with 40 journeys, carried 542 passengers back from Paris. Air France are credited, dur ing the same period, with the use of 53 aircraft in each direction, and carried 596 to Paris and 528 from Paris. The Imperial total was thus 1,186 and that of Air France 1,124. During the same period, another line did pretty well for holiday traffic, and that was to Le Touquet, which is always popular with the fashionable crowd. If the leaders of the alleged smart set decided that Margate was the correct spot to go to, then Margate would be the Heaven on earth of the rest of the crowd. As things are at present though, the Le Touquet run is a good proposition. Imperials carried some 208 souls out and 177 in, and Air France carried a similar number. I happened to pass through Schiphol, Airport of Amster dam, on Tune 1, when the first Amsterdam-Oslo service— which connects with London, by the way—was being in augurated. It is a K.L.M./D.N.L.V. combined service, and a K.L.M. Douglas D.C.3 started it. Cdr. Smirnoff was the pilot and it was interesting to note that the Norwegian Minister, who flagged the machine away, made his speech in English to the assembled Dutch and Norwegian notabilities, and that Mr. A. Plesman, manag ing director of K.L.M., replied in the same language. There was a highly efficient show on the part of the Croydon Fire Brigade last Friday about midday, during the period which the ancient Greeks called the '' noontide hush," and which in some other countries, not to mention Government circles here, is "siesta time." The airport fire alarm went off long and loud, and high officials of the airport seized their crash-proof bowlers (into the dome of which, it is believed, cement has been poured over an iron- framework) and rushed to the tarmac. Apart from a thin column of smoke from behind a police man's ear (where he had hurriedly parked a cigarette), there was little or no trace of fire and a smell of roast pork was traced to the aforesaid policeman's ear. Anyway, with in a remarkably short time the Croydon Fire Brigade arrived, having heard the alarm and acted entirely on then- own initiative. A fine effort, which might have made all the difference if there had been need of their services. What actually happened was that Works (or Bricks) got his pick under a cable, during a spot of the usual devasta tion which goes on all the time, and, like an outsize thrush on a lawn with a stubborn worm, he just sat back and tugged until he had disinterred a fathom or so, which set the first alarm going. The Flamingos I hear that the first of the D.H. Flamingos will leave the factory shortly. The first two, it is rumoured, are destined for Jersey Airways, the next one for the Air Council, the third for the Air Ministry for tests, the fourth for H.M. the King, and then an unspecified number of them for Railway Air Services. Talk about robins^ building nests in aircraft, I should think a couple of mares have nested by now in the ex- International Air Freight machines, which were bought by the Air Ministry six months or so ago and have been moul dering in hangars at Croydon ever since. They were needed for urgent and immediate conversion into class rooms for training wireless operators—or so one was told. No doubt the pupils' desks have been delivered, but some hitch has occurred in placing the contract for the porcelain ink pots. Alternatively, zeal may have outrun discretion, and ten thousand ink wells of the wrong size have been
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