BRITISH EFFORTS TO FLY THE ATLANTIC Captain Hawker, with his Sopwith, was the first to get to St. John’s on March 4. He was quickly followed by Captain Raynham and his Martinsyde. Owing to the constant bad weather which has obtained for seven weeks, the British fliers had not dared to attempt the flight until Sunday, May 18, when Hawker and Raynham started. Everything from snow to the 70-mile gale which blew on April 15 has been experienced at St. John’s. The storm continued throughout that and the next morning. The mechanicians at the hangars of the two flying-camps spent the night watching and guarding the aeroplanes. The Martinsyde plane, which was housed in one of the portable canvas hangars used by the British army in the war, was in danger of injury for a time, when the gale ripped up the pegs that anchored the canvas flies of the hangar, and for a time threatened to snatch the whole thing into the air. These storms have made the grounds impossible for taking off, and as the fliers hoped to take advantage of the full moon, which was beginning to gradually wane, the opportunities for flying by moonlight disappeared and a second moon was on the wane before they started. On March 4 Captain Hawker landed at St. John’s, Newfoundland, with his Sopwith plane, and his five mechanics began to assemble the machine, which follows the general lines of construction adopted by the Sopwith war-plane designers. It is 46 feet wide and 31 feet long, with a flight duration of 25 hours at 100 miles an hour. During a daylight-to-dusk duration test Commander Grieve and Pilot Hawker covered over 900 miles in 9 hours 5 minutes, exactly half the distance between Newfoundland and Ireland. The Rolls-Royce engine develops 375 horse-power at 1,800 revolutions of the crank-shaft. A four-bladed propeller is used geared down to 1,281 revolutions. The Sopwith machine weighs 6,000 pounds fully equipped for the transatlantic flight. In the trial test the engine consumed 146 gallons of petrol—slightly over one-third the capacity of the tanks, which are placed behind the engine and in front of the cockpit in which Major Hawker and Commander Grieve sit. At the end of the 900-mile tryout the engine developed exactly the same power as at the start, which leads Major Hawker to believe the engine will continue to perform the same for the rest of the distance. Major Hawker proposed leaving St. John’s, Newfoundland, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and travelling through the night they hoped to pass the south coast of Ireland shortly before noon the following day, English time, arriving at the Brooklands aerodrome, near London, at 4 o’clock, a total flying time of 19 hours and 30 minutes.