WINGS OVER THE SEA BLERIOT 457 



The official services have not felt that they should give attention 

 to my work. I found support, then, from a great motor firm, " La 

 Societe frangaise Hispano-Suiza." In 1928 we sent to the Azores 

 our joint representative, the engineer M. Heurteult, later director 

 of the Columbia Co, and son-in-law of M. Birkigt, to study on the 

 ground the possibilities of establishing the proposed landing place. 

 He found a suitable site for the location of an airport, but before 

 being able to undertake anything, it was necessary to get the consent 

 of the Portuguese Government. There again the lack of official in- 

 terest on our part stopped short all j)rivate initiative, in spite of 

 the intervention of an interested deputy of French aviation, M. 

 Forgeot. 



Since then, other French firms have interested themselves in this 

 landing place in the Azores, while I have concentrated all my efforts 

 on a more complete solution, making considerable progress and 

 avoiding more easily difficulties of a diplomatic nature: That of 

 floating islands. 



THE FLOATING ISLANDS 



Numerous projects, in France as well as abroad, have been worked 

 out in this coimection, most of them unfortunately somewhat fan- 

 tastic. I cite as an example the projects of two French architects, 

 M. Defrasse and M. Basdevant: The first concerns a floating island 

 of reinforced concrete, forming a horseshoe ; the second contemplates 

 two pontoons joined by a bridge. These are not, however, floating 

 airports, but simply landing places for the refueling of hydroplanes, 

 and the special form proposed by the authors of the plans has for 

 its purpose the creating of a stretch of water calm enough to permit 

 landing even in bad weather. 



I consider that the only project that would be perfect from all 

 points of view is that of the Armstrong Seadromes. 



That American engineer has been actively occupied with the ques- 

 tion for about 15 years. He has not been content with making suc- 

 cessive plans, answering better and better the criticisms and sugges- 

 tions that have been made to him by the eventual users. He has not 

 only studied with very exact care all the details of construction, 

 solved in clever fashion knotty problems such as stability in the 

 water, independence of the motion of the waves, anchorage in a 

 depth of more than 4,000 meters, the transportation of these struc- 

 tures to their determined stations, and many details of arrangement — 

 no, he has done more — with the support of the research association 

 which he created, he has completed models, reduced in scale it is 

 true, but nevertheless devices weighing several tons. He has tested 



