Evening star., 1922-04-14
FASCINATION AND ROMANCE
OF FLYING VIVIDLY DEPICTED
Graphic Portrayaltb 81 Sir Ross Smith,
. Who Met Death on the Eve of
Round-the-World Trip.

kipling, not an engineer, wrote
most feelingly of the love of the man
Fin the cab for his locomotive; in the
field Of aviation it was an aviator.
Sir Ross Smith, who has portrayed
most ylvidly the fascination, and
romance of-nying.
The evtatpr who met death upon the
eve OF a Light around the world.
Maeazlne the story of his epochal
London to- Australia air voyage-a
story which Already has become the
classic Of aerial travel.
This story contained a wealth OF
geographic detail and technical infor-
scribed the sensations of air travel
! are, perhaps, the most unusual
Small Machine for Short Trip.
He wrote:
"A small machine is ideal for short
nights. toy-riding in the heavens or
sightseeing among the clouds, but
tnere Is something more majestic and
stable about the big bombers which a
pdiot begins to love. An exquisite
chine and pilot; each. as it were.
merges into the other. The machine is
rudimentary, and the pilot the intel
tectual force. The levers and controls
| are the nervous system OF the ma
chine, through which the will OF the
pilot may be expressed-and ex-
pressed-and expressed to an infinite
ly fine degree. A flying machine is
something entirely apart from and
above All other contriyances of mans
ingenuity.
"The airplane is the nearest thing
to animate life that man has created.
In the air a machine ceases indeed to
be mere piece OF mechanism; II. be-
comes animate and IL capable not only
OF primary guidance and control. but
actually of expressing q pilot's tenn
perament.
Engines the Machiae's Lungs.
"The lungs Of the machine. its en-
| wisdom. Their marvellous reliability
and great intricacy are almost as
awesome as the human anatomy.
When both engines are going well and
synchronised to the same speed. the
roar of the exhausts develops into
one long sustained rhythmical boom
boom-boom. 1t is song Of pleasant
harmony to the pilot. q duet of con-
tentment that sings Of a perfect firing
| in both engines and says that all Is
we'll.
This melody of power doomed
sought to probe the inscrutable fu-
ture. as we swept over the coast of
England at ninety miles per hour"
or another phase of the trip, when
it was determined to climb above the
clouds he wrote:
so we climbed steadily in a wide,
ascending spiral, until we reached an
altitude OF 5000 feet, and were then
just above the clouds. Below us the
snowstorm ragged. but we had entered
another world-a strange world, ali
our own. with bright, dazzling sun
shine.
Likened to Vision Of Polar Region.
"It might have been a vision Of the
polar regions; it undoubtedly felt like
it. The mighty cloud ocean over
which we were scudding resembled a
polar landscape covered with snow.
The rounded cloud contours might
have been the domes of snow merged
SUBMITS. 1t was hard to conceive that
that amorphous expanse was not ac-
tual, solid. Here and there focculent
towers and ramps heaved up. piled
like mighty snow dumps. topping and
crushing into one another Every
thing was so tremendous, SO vast that
ones sense of proportion swayed un-
controlled.
"The cold grew more intense. ? Our
hands and feet lost all feeling, and
our bodies became well nigh frozen.
Goggles were useless. owing to the
ice, and we suffered much agony
through being compelled to keep a
lookout with unprotected eyes
straining into the ninety-miles-an-
hour snow blast
The only really cheerful objects