Sidney, Mar. 21
Flying Officer A. E. Clouston and his companion, Mr, Victor Ricketts, who have just broken the flight record from England to New Zealand, arrived here at 401 pin. local time) to-day. The flight from New Zealand to Australia took eight hours. The airmen are attempting to break the New-Zealand-England record.
The fliers arrived in Blenheim, New Zealand, unexpectedly at 457 p.m. yesterday, hopped off for Sydney at 9.31 this morning_on the first stage of their return journey.
While the airmen were having some much-needed sleep last night, their machine was given a thorough overhaul.
Clouston and his companion, although failing to beat the England-Australia record of Scott and Campbell Black by a few hours, considerably improved on the time of Miss Jean Batten, the New Zealand tier, for a flight' from England to New Zealand. They took only four days, eight hours and seven minutes for the entire trip compared with Miss Batten's figures of eleven days, one hour and 25 minutes.
There were no welcoming crowds when the two airmen arrived yesterday at Blenheim, which is in the extreme north-east of South Island, as the fliers had not been expected.
On taking off from Sydney in the morning, they announced that they were returning to England. They kept their secret so well that no one realized until they turned up at Blenheim that they had really meant to fly the dangerous last lap across the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand A blinding hail storm, which cut the fabric of their machine, while they were over the Timor Sea, cost Clouston and Ricketts the England-Australia record:
After leaving Gravesend, they made rapid progress all the way up Singapore, but in their last hop to Port Darwin the weather intervened and ruined whatever chance they had of beating the time of two days, four hours and 38 minutes set up by C.W.A. Scott and T. Campbell Black in the London-Melbourne air race in 1934. Their time was two days, twelve hours and eight minutes—Reuter. retreating troops by Central Army patrols, Ki-hsien's defenders were reported to be streaming to the mountainous area between Ki-hsien and Siangning They were, however, closely pursued by mobile Japanese units.
Japanese military authorities here claimed to-day that with the fall of Ki-hsien the backbone of Chinese resistance in the province is broken, Japanese military operations Shansi were launched four months ago.
Reports of a sanguinary clash between the Senda and Yoshioka detachments and an attacking force of 4,000 Communists south of Itsingchen, 30 kims. west of Shen-chih, in north-western Shansi, on March 17-18, were received here to-day.
Following the battle, which lasted throughout the night the Chinese guerilla unit retreated, leaving behind more than 1,000 dead bodies.
—Domei.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.