Success in War and Peace From Our Aviation Correspondent The wonderful records made in the air last year are now common knowledge, and with the Italians blazing the Far Eastern highway an air girdle, complete but for the Pacific, has been made. The most marvellous event of all, and to which Britons can look back with pride. has been the making of a journey from the Motherland to the Commonwealth, This in turn will probably be held in least account when the lapse of time and the foreed marches of science and engineering bring aviation into its 6wn. The war has had much to do with the great work—a flight half-round the world in 124 hours (actual travelling through the air), storm-tossed, sun-scorched, through snow, rain and drought.
The Vickers biplane with the 12- cylinder, water cooled Rolls-Royce aero engine, which performed the greatest feat, was evolved for war service; it was actually designed to do a specified war job of work, and was only applied to civil aerial transportation after we had beaten the Germans.
The mere idea} of an aeroplane. or of an engine, is one thing to design, but to com: plete a machine in its entirety to perform a definite job of work quite another, and is the work of many minds. hands, and years of incessant. toil.
In designing machines for war service, the designer and engineer had to concentrate their efforts on obtaining the greatest speed and climbing capacity in two types of machines—the fighting bus. with the maximum amount of speed and rapidity in climbing, and the bombing bus with her heavy load and endurance, sacrificing all safety theories to attain this object.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.