Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Thursday 20 September 1945, page 20


NON-STOP FLIGHT OF

6,500 MILES

Super-Forts Leave Japan for USA

From Australian Associated Press,

New York

US War Department announced yesterday that three Super-Fort-resses had left Mizutani airfield, in Southern Hokhaido, northernmost home island of Japan, on a non-stop flight of 6,500 miles to Wash-ington, says Associated Press of America correspondent in Washing-

ton.

The planes left at 6am yesterday (Melbourne time), and are expected to finish the trip at 7.30am today (Melbourne time). They are regular combat planes, with the turrets and some of their armour removed. Each carries a crew of 12, all veterans of bombing raids against Japan, and each is commanded by a generalLieut-General Barney Giles, MajorGeneral Curtis Le May, and BrigGeneral Emmett O'Donnell. The course is a great circle route over the Kuriles Islands, across the Aleu-tians, the Canadian Rockies, Minne-sota, Michigan, and Washington. The flight is intended as a concrete example of the current and future potentialities of airpower.

The world's longest non-stop flight of 6,292 miles was made by Rus-sians in 1937. Mizutani airfield, which is near Sapporo, is reported to have been built with an idea of launching one-way Kamikaze mis-sions by four-engined bombers on

USA.

The Super-Fortresses took off with approximately 9,000 gallons of petrol

in each.

The War Department withheld an-nouncement of the flight until the planes had made radio contact with the Aleutian bases. The flight will take advantage of favourable pre-vailing winds around 30,000ft or

more.