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COMMUNICATIONS
The shipbreaking industry in Hong Kong was stable during the year and an average of 30 ships were in the process of demolition each month. A total of 65 ships were broken up during the year, totalling 451,195 gross tons.
An expansion scheme for the western harbour was approved in August. The scheme includes the resiting and renumbering of present mooring buoys and the supply and laying of new ones. The various quarantine and dangerous goods anchorages will be moved and eventually a total of 35 moorings in the western harbour for vessels up to 450 feet and 41 moorings for vessels over 450 feet will be available. Of these, 33 will be classed as typhoon moorings. Earlier in the year, as a preliminary step in the above scheme, the western harbour limits were extended and a further two square miles are now included in the harbour area.
CIVIL AVIATION
The development of civil aviation in Hong Kong has kept pace with that elsewhere in the world. Travelling time from Europe and the Americas has been reduced to a matter of hours and has made a significant contribution to the Colony's life and economy.
The first flight by an aircraft in Hong Kong took place in 1911, but it was not until some 20 years later that aviation began to show the first real signs of the growth that was to follow. The small grass airfield on the north shore of Kowloon Bay, which had been the scene of many earlier historic flights, was consider- ably extended by reclamation during the early 1930's, and in 1936 a weekly mail and passenger service between Hong Kong and Penang, connecting with the London-Singapore-Australia service, was inaugurated by Imperial Airways. Later that year services to Canton and Shanghai were introduced and in 1937 Pan American Airways opened up the trans-Pacific route to Manila and San Francisco. By the time the Pacific war broke out in 1941 five companies were operating regular scheduled flights to and from the Colony.
After the war, civil air transport developed rapidly and it be- came apparent that existing airport facilities would soon become inadequate. The mountainous nature of the terrain made a site for a new airport difficult to find and a decision was made to develop