American Isles

Useful As Weather Stations

From Our Own Correspondent

Honolulu, Sept. 24.

A MERICAN hopes of using Howland lsland as a landing field on pro jected trans-Pacific air services are be coming more remote, according to spokes men of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which controls Howland, Baker and Jarvis, mid-Pacific equatorial islands which America hurriedly occupied early in 1935.

This statement was made because re cently there were unfounded rumours that Baker, for example, was to be aban doned by the U.S. occupants. The state ment continued: “We do insist, however, that the islands more than pay for their upkeep by their value, present and future, for aerial ob servation outposts, in that full weather records, ground and upper-air, are being compiled and released daily to trans pacific shipping and aviation. This work gives the islands potential military values, apart from the fact that some day they might be of value for trans ocean and land-plane emergency fields.

“Howland already has fine three-way landing facilities for land and amphibian planes.

“However, trans-ocean planes of the future will be of long range, and thus they will fly over the equatorial islands, which then probably would be maintain ed as emergency fields only. The weather reporting facilities, however, would be invaluable.”

This rather belated official statement again draws attention to the fact that the British have occupied the most valu able of mid-Pacific islands for aviation, namely: Fanning, Christmas, Hull, Can ton, etc.