Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1907 - 1954), Tuesday 15 September 1953, page 5


WORLD'S LONGEST & FASTEST AIR RACE

On October 8 the world's longest and fastest air race will start at London Airport. It will finish at Harewood Airport, Christchurch, New Zealand, 14,000 miles away within 24 hours . Some of the air-craft will reach speeds of more than 10 miles a minute on some of the legs of the flight in order to do the distance in this time.

Some of the world's leading jet bombers will compete against each other for the coveted No. 1 posi-tion, with which goes the Harewood Gold Cup and 10,000 in prize money. The R.A.A.F. has entered two Australian-built Can-berra Jet bombers to be flown by Wing Commander D. R. Cuming, A.F.C. and Bar, and Squadron Leader P. F. Raw, D.F.C., Polish Cross of Val-our. Tbe Royal Air Force has entered one Valiant four engined jet bomber and three Canberras. The Australians consider that the four-engined Valiant is the greatest threat to their winning the race, but they still retain high hopes of bringing home the honours for Australia. Also in the speed section are two De Havilland Mos-quito bombers flown by two Australians, Mr. A. R. J. Ogtes and Captain J. Woods, and a Mustang single engined built by Commonwealth Air-craft Corporation, Fisher-men's Bend, Victoria, and flown by an Australian Flight Lieutenant, J L Whiteman. The air race will commence at 4.30 p.m. English time, on October 8, which is 2.30 a.m. Australian Eastern standard time. His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester will start the race. The aircraft will take off from London Airport with short time intervals between each entrant. The aircraft judged to be the fastest In the race will take off first. This will be the Valiant. The remaining entrants in the speed section will be allotted to take-off time by the Judges. Last February a special unit called No. 1 R.A.A.F. Long Range Flight was formed at Laverton, Victoria, and nine R.A.A.F. pilots and navigators were posted to it. The Commanding Officer of the Flight is Wing Com-mander Cuming who la also captain of the R.A.A.F. No. 1 entry. Since No. 1 Long Range Flight has been formed, the

air crews and ground staff have been working industri ously on many modifications to their aircraft. Finalising plans for the ran and settling on a route to fly. As the rules of the air race stated that all aircraft must have their fiying logs stamp-ed at a stoppnig-off place be-tween 30deg. East and 120deg. East, the R.A.A.F. teams plan to put down first at Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. From Bahrain, they fly to Rat-malana, Colombo, then on to Cocos Island In the Indian Ocean. After Cocos they land at Guildford near Perth, Western Australia, and then take off on the final leg to Christ-church. If Perth is weather bound the R.A.A.F. plan an alternative refuelling post at Woomera. To condition themselves for the long hours they will be in the air during the air race and also to finalise the mass of pre-flight data that they have been working on, the R.A.A.F. crews have spent the whole of August on long flights at 40,000 feet. One Canberra flew from Laverton to Colombo via Darwin and returned through Christ church, N.Z. Another Can-berra flew to Darwin, Perth and then 3146 miles non-stop to Christchurch before re-turning to Laverton. Other individual long flights were made to Perth and return, and Townsville and return. In all these flights the R.A.A.F. air race Canberras each flew more than twice the official London-New Zea-land air race distance of 14,000 miles. The shortest hop they flew was between Christ-church, N.Z. and Laverton, Victoria, 1520 miles. The longest hop was the non-stop 3145 miles from Perth, W.A. to Christchurch, N.Z. Safety aspects of the flying side of the race have not been overlooked by the air race officials or the R.A.A.F. The R.A.A.F., at the request of the New Zealand Govern-ment, has sent Ground Con trolled Approach and an ex-pert team to work the equip-ment at Christchurch. This equipment Is a safeguard

against bad weather hinder-ing the aircraft as they make their nnal approach to land at the end of tbe race. The R.A.A.F. is stationing long-range Neptune recon-naisance aircraft at Perth, W.A. Cocos Island and East Sale, Victoria. These air-craft will be on constant standby to go to the assist-ance of any aircraft which may strike trouble between Colombo and Christchurch, most of which route is across the sea. The crew of the first R.A.A.F. Canberra is Wing Commander D. R Cuming, A.F.C. and Bar, of Melbourne, captain; Flying Officer R. Atkinson of Queensland, sec ond pilot; and Squadron Leader C. Harvey of Mel-bourne, navigator. The crew of the second R.A.A.F.. Canberra Is Squad-ron Leader P. F. Raw, D.F.C. of Melbourne, captain; Flying Officer F. N, Davis, D.F.C. of Ipswich. Queensland, second pilot; and Flight Lieutenant W. D. Kerr, of Melbourne, navigator. The R.A,A.F. Canberra will be refuelled by the oil com panies who have combined as refuelling teams st Bahrain, Colombo and Perth, W.A. At Cocos and Woomera the R.A.A.F. will do its own re-fuelling with special portable hydrant refuelling units. At each stopping-off place the R.A.A.F. will have a team of ground staff to service the two Canberra jet bombers. The ground staff team will be led by a RAA.F. navigator whose main task will be to provide a complete fight plan lor the following leg of the flight for the race crews. In this way, the time on the ground for the race teams will be cut to a bare minimum — may be ten minutes. There will be no time to eat on the ground and oxygen masks prevent eating during flight. Special equipment his been secured from England so that the crews can suck fruit juices through their masks. The race is a test of human stamina as well as in-telligence.