The claim that these alleged record-breaking machines were standard fighters is false.
The planes were special racing craft, purely and simply, and hád no more relation to the machines supplied for military use than a racing car hai to an armoured car. The Messerschmidt fighting planes not even as fast as the British Spitfire.
It is doubtful if the claimed speeds will be recognized as international records, for several reasons, In the first.place, special fuel was used for the flights, and in the second place the planes climbed to more than 1,000 feet before the actual record runs and then dived to attain their maximum speeds.
T was shown last week photographs, now in the possession of British air experts, which clearly expose the bluff.
The still photographs of the record-breakers show ordinary fighters complete with all equipment, even to the radio mast The film on the record runs shows a blurred machine, obviously moving at great speed. When this is enlarged it shows an entirely different aircraft from the fighter.
As the refugee camps in Hongkong are overcrowded, hundreds of new arrivals have been compelled to sleep in the open, says a Hongkong Chinese message to the "Sin Wan Pao." The hapless refugees, the report adds, have appealed to the various charitable organizations in the British colony to devise measures buying programme, and it Pd their succour, Ge y's Foreign Trad,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.