Long-distance travel receives something new and wonderful in the turbo-jet air liners which the British Overseas Airways Corporation is putting into regular service on the London-Johannesburg route on the second day of next month. Running not far behind the speed of sound, these aircraft ride through the sunny upper air far above the rain and the overcast in a manner which surprises and enlightens the traveller.
Yesterday I travelled from London to Rome and back in a Comet furnished in the standard manner and operated by a B.O.A.C. crew in accordance with the corporation╒s normal practice. Experience of all kinds of road, rail, sea, and air voyaging spread over many years enables me to state that the new turbo-jet travel is a revelation and a revolution. It has three marked advantages over other kinds of travel: it is much faster, it is much smoother, and it is
quieter.
I flew to Rome and back in the Comet more than a year ago, when the aircraft set an official speed record for the distance of over nine hundred miles. But that aircraft was stripped bare except for a few special seats. Yesterday they did the same journey out and back in a fully furnished machine carrying a full complement of 36 persons and a crew of six, and our time over the course was not much different. Outward from London we took two hours seventeen minutes. Back to London, with an adverse wind, we took two hours 31 minutes. The time actually taken was in both cases within a minute of the estimates
of the captain of the aircraft, Capt. E E Rodley.
INTO THE SUNLIGHT
We boarded the Comet at London Airport a few minutes before take-off time at 9 30 and almost immediately the four De Havilland Ghost engines were started. There was no running-up of engines for turbines do not require this preliminary. In 35 seconds we were airborne, but London Traffic Control had not given us unrestricted climb because of the overcast sky and the need to keep track of all aircraft in the region. So we remained comparatively low, at about three thousand feet, until we reached Dunsfold Beacon, near Guildford. Then Captain Rodley opened up the engines and the Comet soared through the overcast, coming out in bright sunlight about thirty minutes after the take-off at the height of 24,500 feet.
We climbed on to 30,000 feet and then to over 40,000 with the outside temperature falling to minus 61 degrees centigrade. Inside the pressurised cabin the conditions were extremely pleasant with exactly the right warmth and humidity. Wind speed at this height was about 50 knots and our air speed was 460 miles an hour. Our ground speed, with favouring wind in this direction, was 495 miles an hour. Captain Rodley passed back a note to say that we were ahead of schedule. Soon after a break in the clouds, which had been continuous until then, enabled us to see Lake Geneva and a marvellous spectacle of the Alps.
The aircraft was running as smoothly as an ice-skater: indeed that was the only comparison that presented itself, for no other aircraft, or indeed any other vehicle, could compare with its smoothness. In the pilot╒s compartment, which Captain Rodley allowed me to visit, the effect was uncanny. For the instruments testified to an air speed of nearly 500 miles an hour. The engine revolution counters to 9,500 revolutions a minute, and the jet pipe temperature indicators to 600 degrees centigrade. Yet everything was rock steady. We seemed poised in space.
The let-down both at Rome and at London was done at fairly high speed, Captain Rodley only applying the air brakes occasionally to control the descent.
