FLIGHT OVER EVEREST
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIII,—It must be a quite unaccustomed pleasure for you to observe an author agreeing with a critic who has reviewed a book of his in your columns. I feel compelled to express my cordial and hearty concurrence with the statement by Mr. Martin Lindsay which appeared in your issue of December 15th, to the effect that the flights over Mount Everest could have been carried out by the Service Aircraft in charge of the Royal Air. Force in India, given suitable Pegasus engines and super-chargers.
The spirit of enterprise shown by the proposal to fit Pegasus engines to these fills one with admiration. A few other pro- visions would have been necessary, as I think your readers will agree, to equip them for their special task. They should, of course, be provided with different fuselages to suit the different engines, different propellers to cope with the special conditions, besides the special super-chargers and different under-carriages and wheels to accommodate the different propellers. Also, different wings and wing structure would have been necessary, different tails, fins, elevators and prob- ably rudders. Besides these, it would have been necessary to have had the special oxygen sets which Mr. Lindsay sug- gests, and, in addition, specially re-designed cameras to operate in the cold and rarefied atmosphere, and, as. a con- comitant to these, the special heating arrangements. Again, it would no doubt have been as well to have provided Mr. Martin Lindsay's adumbrated aircraft with re-designed cock- pits to facilitate the work of the crews.
The aeroplanes thus modified, after being stripped of their service load of armament, would have indeed been int-....resting machines.—I am, Sir, &c.,
L. V. S. BLACKER...
The Houston-Mt. Everest Flight, 102 Sydney tRtrot, S.W.3.. .
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