Harold Catty

Tribute to Mon Who Organised the PAA South Pacific Service

THE trans-Pacific service of Pan American Airways, between San Francisco and Auckland, is now running regularly; and, owing to enemy interference with our shipping services, the new air-line is of great value to Australia and New Zealand.

The man who created this new inter national link is Harold Gatty (now PAA manager at Auckland); and this is what an Australian newspaper said about him recently:— This quiet, friendly Tasmanian, grad uate of Jervis Bay Naval College, then merchant marine officer, was one of the pioneers of the science of air navigation that makes ocean flight arrivals certain.

He stepped into aviation through navi gation, into fame by his round-the-world flight with Wiley Post, then into avia tion diplomacy.

For him, five years of endless inter national negotiation ended in Septem ber, when he stepped ashore from the Clipper and watched the first regular mail unloaded.

He knows, better than anyone else, how many times the service was nearly wrecked before it was ever begun. He knows how easy it would have been for the American company to decide against spending the fortune it has laid out on its base and big hotel on uninhabited Canton Island, and on facilities at Nou mea. He knows, better than most, the full story of the mysterious British and American “expeditions” that sailed for secret destinations, left colonising parties behind, and how the mysteries and rivalries were ended by the Anglo- American agreement for joint use of Canton.

Also, he knows that history will record as the real Pacific aviation pioneers not the American airline, but Australia’s

almost-forgotten men—Kingsford-Smith,

Ulm and Taylor.

The American crews, old in the prac tice of a new science, taking watch and watch about in their huge machine, availing themselves of the most modern technique in navigation, radio and meteorology, must sometimes think with respect and wonder of those first Paci fic flights—down in the old, slow, mag nificent Southern Cross, back in her namesake, the Lady.