Transatlantica

News from four scattered spots last week suggested that the long-touted airplane service is on the verge of becoming a reality:

P: In Bermuda, up from the new airport on coral-girt DarreH's Island rose the four-motored, 18-ton flying boat Cavalier for its first test flight since arriving in sections from Great Britain two months ago. For 26 minutes the big craft drummed over the harbor at 185 m.p.h. with only its crew aboard. In a few weeks, Imperial Airways will start it buzzing back & forth to the U. S. in a series of tests preparatory to passenger service this summer.

P: Off Ireland, the Cavalier's twin, the Caledonia, stripped of all fittings to make room for extra gas tanks, circled for hours over the sea to give Imperial personnel a taste of ocean flying, then droned off on a non-stop jump to Egypt in 13 hr. 35 min.

P: In Washington, Congress pondered a bill appropriating $750,000 for transatlantic air mail contracts to start Nov. 1.

P: At St. Johns, Newfoundland, 36 years ago, Guglielmo Marconi heard the feeble ticks of the first transatlantic wireless. At St. Johns, 18 years ago, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown took off with the first mail to be flown across the Atlantic. Last week, 150 miles northwest of St. Johns near Botwood, in the dense woods at Hattie's Camp, 350 men were busy carving out a square mile which is to be North America's first transatlantic flying field.

Hattie's Camp was chosen by Britain's Air Ministry because of the clear approaches on all sides. Last May work began on four huge runways, two of which are nearing completion. One will be a mile long, 1,200 ft. wide, the others 4,500 ft. long, 600 ft. wide. All will be covered with asphalt and an extra mile of approach will be cleared at each end. All runways will have a flushing apparatus to clear away snow. Two miles away at Gander Lake, which is said to be ice-free all year, is a clearing for a seaplane base, with two channels almost wholly dredged. On the Newfoundland Railway stands a new station already labeled "Newfoundland Airport." Hotels, customs, hangars are soon to go up. Cost of the entire project: $3,500,000.

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