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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 1635.PDF
FLIGHT, 11 December 1953 789 THE ROYAL TOUR OF THE WORLD Twenty Thousand Miles by Air: The Queen Demonstrates Her Faith in Air Transport FOR the first time in history a reigning monarch of Great Britain is travelling round the world to visit the Dominions and Colonies. During the tour on which Queen Elizabeth II has embarked, with the Duke of Edin burgh, she will cover a total distance of 50,000 miles, will touch all seven continents of the world, and will be seen for die first time by her subjects in the South Seas, New Zealand, Australia and Ceylon. In New Zealand and Australia, particularly, her tour will include a large number of scattered and remote communities which, but for extensive use of air transport, time would not allow her to visit. It was at Her Majesty's own request that arrangements were made for her to fly no less than 10,000 miles in Australia alone. Having already flown over 4,000 miles across the Atlantic (again as the first reigning monarch to do so) she is now aboard the liner Gothic approaching Fiji, whence she will fly to Tonga. After her visit to New Zealand and Australia, she will travel by sea via Ceylon to Aden, and there she will once more board an aircraft. She will fly from Aden to Entebbe and thence to Tobruk, covering in two days of travel a distance equivalent to almost the whole length of the African continent. It can be said that without the use of air transport so extensive and thorough a tour would not have been possible, and that many of Her Majesty's subjects would have been deprived of this unique opportunity of seeing the monarch to whom they owe allegiance. But the Queen is no new comer to air travel. Both she and the Duke of Edinburgh have, on numerous occasions, made use of the Vikings of the King's Flight, and have also undertaken together some notable long-distance air journeys. Before her accession to the throne they flew to Canada from England at the start of their Canadian tour in 1951. The aircraft on that occasion was the same Stratocruiser, Canopus, which carried them to Jamaica on November 23rd-25th. They also flew to Kenya, in 1952, at the beginning of the Australian tour which wae so sadly interrupted by the death of the late King. The aircraft Departure: The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh board the Stratocruiser "Canopus" at London Airport on the evening of November 23rd. then was an Argonaut of B.O.A.C. The Queen has also shown a keen interest in air travel and a knowledge of air matters which has surprised the experts. She is at present patron of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators, and was previously Grand Master of the Guild. The present Grand Master is the Duke of Edinburgh. He is, of course, a qualified Service pilot and frequently flies his own D.H. Devon. Yet travel by aeroplane, and all that it has come to imply in the modern world, is but fifty years old. Within living memory powered flight was a mere dream, and a challenge to the courage and ingenuity of the individual pioneer. Air transport as we know it today was not even seriously con templated. In so short a span of time aircraft have been developed weighing sixty tons or more and equalling in size the craft which carried the sailors of the first Elizabethan age over to the New World. And these aircraft—both British and American types are concerned—have attained a standard of reliability and safety such that the Queen had no hesitation in deciding to make use of them for normal travel. It is proposed in these pages to describe the arrangements made for air travel during the royal tour—to indicate graphic ally the significance of air transport in the Queen's journey and to demonstrate the advantage that travel by this means confers both on Her Majesty and, directly and indirectly, on her subjects. Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand.—Next Thursday, December 17th, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will arrive at Suva, in Fiji, aboard the liner Gothic. There they will receive the traditional welcomes of the island and open the new Central Medical School and inspect the Adi Cakobau School. On the following day they will be formally welcomed in the Colony's Legislative Council Chamber. During the morning, they will drive to the R.N.Z.A.F. flying-boat station at Laucala Bay, and there board a Solent of Tasman Empire THE BLUFF Jan SO
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