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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 0395.PDF
FEBRUARY 8, 1940 123 COMMERCIAL AVIATION EVEN ON THE OTHER SIDE : The American Clipper, returning to the United States, finds Baltimore harbour choked with ice It ultimately found a clear patch on which to sit down. LETTERS VIA BERLIN "A. Viator " on Cross and Crossed Passengers, the Last Great Frost, the Derby Family, and Flying Dervishes AQUAINT situation arises when people in Londonobtain correspondence from friends in neutral coun-tries stamped with the German High Command censor's stamp, the centrepiece of which is a worried - looking eagle with spots before his eyes. From Copenhagen every day, I believe, you can take a machine for Berlin as well as for London. Possibly, some harassed mailing clerk put the London mail on the Berlin plane, or the Post Office there, disliking the taste of the gum on one label, insisted on licking nothing but '' Berlin'' labels cunningly sweetened and flavoured with rum by the Berlin Ministry for Honied Words and Sugar- coated Pills. Anyway, the incident reminds me of the piping times of peace at an airport which my older readers may have heard of from their parents, to wit Croydon. Thence you might have as many as ten air liners of various shapes and sizes departing at about the same time for different capitals of Europe. One time there were two small busi- ness men, subfusc as to clothing, fussy as to manner and bearing, almost identically badly rolled umbrellas, and bulging brief cases. One was for Brussels and the other for Amsterdam. On the tarmac were two Douglas D.C.3S, one bound for Brussels and the other for Amsterdam. Two groups of pas~>engers were carefully shepherded through passport formalities, and yet, somehow or other, the two little mass-produced business men got mixed. The one whose heart belonged to Brussels went to Amster- dam, and the other, whose Old Dutch awaited him in Holland, arrived in Brussels. There is nothing impossible, so far as I know, in the picture of a Briton arriving in Berlin with a vague haunting notion that something is wrong somewhere, or of a German arriving in England by air. Let us hope that in either case the unhappy traveller will be given a good stiff glass of the local spirituous liquor and returned to the place whence he came. I even go so far as to believe that the friendly outlook of the pro- fessional aviation people in either country towards an errant passenger, which has become almost an instinct with ground staffs everywhere, would expedite such a happy repatriation. Just when I had composed a lovely bit to placate the Censor (about my plumber downing tools and going home for his solar topee on account of the tropical weather which had congealed the water in the pipes and given the kitchen boiler sunstroke, complicated by hiccoughs) the Sunday newspapers let the frozen cat out of the ice bag and said it had never been so cold since the year before Waterloo, the last time the Thames froze over. As a matter of fact, I have an old letter in my posses- sion, dated January, 1823, but not written to me person- ally, which states that the Thames, was frozen over at the time the letter was written, but what's a spot of accuracy to a newspaper intent on dragging in the fact that the battle of Waterloo was won on the skating ponds of Eton? Anyway, commercial aviation carried on pretty well in spite of the cold snap, and cancellations were not
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