Commander Maitland, navigated the R34 to the United States and back in 1919, recently gave a paper on the commercial aspect of airship transport before the International Air Congress in London.
Operating with a 5,000,000 cubic feet capacity airship, with an air displacement of 150 tons, he said, the ship would have a speed of 80 miles an hour, and could carry 200 passengers, and 11 tons of mails and freight, on a non-stop flight of 2,500 miles, from England to Egypt er from Egypt to Bombay.
Dividing the journey up into stages of this length, the times of transit, compared with the present day steamship, would-show an average saving of 66 per cent. An airship of 150 tons air displacement, carrying no cargo, would have a range of 11,500 miles, at_a speed of 80 miles an hour, which was greater than that which any steamship could cover without refuelling, even at 20 m.p.h. At 40 m.p.h. the airship would have a range of 24,000 miles, and could remain in the air for 600 hours, or 25 days.
For patrol duties the airship would have a greater endurance than that of the light cruiser, and, in addition to the advantage to the State that would accrue from the improved Empire communication, an actual saving in State expenditure might reasonably be expected in the future.
Lieut.-Col. M. O'Gorman said that, after having been taken up and abandoned by the-State three times, airships were at the beginning of a stage when the State was going to take them up again.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.