Plane Circles Regina 45 Minutes in Fog As Mail Tests Start. A big silver plane nosed through a hole in a fog bank over the Regina airport on Tuesday morning March 1st, 1938 to deliver the city's first air mail in eight years. For a time it looked like Regina would be robbed of its place as a port of call on the first air mail flight over the west as the big Lockheed plane circled the city at 110 miles an hour for 45 minutes before the fog cleared sufficiently to enable the crew to land.
Previously arrangements had been made for the crew to bring the plane down at Moose Jaw, where visibility was good, in the event the fog did not lift over Regina. After delivering two sacks of Winnipeg mail to Regina postal authorities. pilots Herbert Seagram and Robert M. Smith took off at noon sharp for Lethbridge with visibility unlimited the entire distance.
Other planes turn back. The weather, however, played havoc with the eastbound flight out of Vancouver and pilots Bruce Middleton and Malcolm Barclay were forced to return to Vancouver because of fog over the Fraser canyon. The eastbound flight was subsequently cancelled.
The westbound machine flew into Regina along the radio beam emitted from the old radio range station on Dewdney Avenue. When the new station south on the no. 6 highway was in operation the beam will guide the planes right into the airport doing away with delays occasioned in landing.
(To be continued in NetLetter nr 1326 – eds)
|