THROUGH THE ARCHIVES: London airman flies from Australia to England in under 11 days

After flying through a gale and heavy storm on the Continent, Mr C W A Scott, a London airman, who set up a new record for a flight to Australia from England in April, 1930, arrived at Lympne, Kent, near Folkestone, on the evening of the previous day, having flown from Australia in under 11 days.

Mr Scott had left Wyndham, Australia, on 26th May on his homeward flight in a small Gypsy Moth machine given to him by Lord Wakefield of Hythe, especially for the flight.

The 40,000 miles was accomplished in 10 days, 23 hours, which was 48 hours less than the time taken by Air-Commodore Kingsford-Smith in the Southern Cross.

Early the previous day Mr Scott had left Brindisi in Italy on the last stage of his flight, and he covered the distance of 1,350 miles in one hop. The weather conditions had been good, except for a head wind, until he neared Calais, where a heavy thunderstorm had been raging.

From there to Lympne he had flown through broken weather, head into a gale, very heavy rain, and further storms.

He was suffering badly from cramp and deafness when he stepped out of the cockpit of the plane at Lympne.

And he brought the machine right into the hangar from which he had started his first flight in April 1930.

Speaking to press representatives after landing at Lympne he said: “It is too far and I am really glad it is all over now.”

Mr Scott said that he considered the most recent flight to be the better of the two, and also more difficult, because the monsoons had broken, and almost all the way he had to contend with head winds.

“I had good weather as far as Singapore, and then I encountered the monsoons from Rangoon. I nearly always had head winds, and at times rainstorms. For three days whilst flying from Calcutta to Aleppo it was so hot that I gave up flying altogether during the middle of the day, and this considerably reduced my mileage.”