AVIATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3332, 26 September 1911, Page 5

AVIATION.

TRANSCONTINENTAL. ATTEMPT FAILS. PROPOSED OCEAN TO OCEAN FLIGHT. [UNITIBD PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT. 3 NEW YORK, Sept. 24. Mr Fowler, the aviator, who attempted a transcontinental flight, was unable to cross the Sierras. He returned, and landed at Colfax. His engine was not strong enough to carry the machine across the summit. He will probably abandon his attempt. Mr Rodgers has resumed his ocean to ocean flight. ACROSS THE BLUE MOUNTAINS. (Received Sept. 26, 12.15 a.m.) SYDNEY, Sept. 25. An aviator named McDonald, with a passenger, crossed the Blue Mountains from Penrith to Glenbrook. THE DANGERS OF FLYING. The two points on which, above all others, the future of the aeroplane depends, are the diminution of risk and the increase of efficiency; and as the second of these can hardly fail to come in the ordinary course of progress, the first is till© more important for the moment. Even at present, though, the dangers of flying are —in the view, at least of the men who should be most disturbed- by them- —much exaggerated, In the opinion of the expert there is liardly any accident which not preventable ; and l the careful tables and records that Mr. Claude Graham-White compiled for his book, “The Aeroplane : Past, Present, and Future,” certainly support this view. During the 18 months to which these records apply more than a thousand people learnt the use of the aeroplane. During the same period there were 35 fatal accidents, in which! 38 people lost their lives. . As a curious rather than as a valuable basis of comparison, it may be pointed out that 90 people were killed' and 80 injured while mountaineering last year—and the .army of mountain-climbers is not numerous —and that the construction of the first hundred miles of railway in England cost 1:5 lives. What is more useful, however, is the analysis that is made of these accidents. Eleven of them were the result'of breakages; eight of loss of control ; three of some failure of the controlling mechanism; and four of them occurred when the aeroplane was not in the air at all. When Orville Wright fell with Lieutenant' Self ridge, for instance. a broken .propeller mas the cause. ’ Captain Ferber was crushed by his engine, tlxat broke loose from its bed in a tumble while he was running along l the ground. Delagrango subjected a light machine to too. great a strain, and one of the wings “buckled u.p.” The accident to Charles Rolls, in its first causes, was somewhat similar; and 1 so was that to Wacbter, who made a dive without cutting off his engine. In all these cases greater structural strength might have removel all danger.