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AVIATION.
"Inkum" F The death of Mrs. Gunn the other day must have recalled memories to many. She was the widow of China's first aviator, Captain Tom Gunn, and was a member of a well-known Hongkong family. Tom was trained in America, I believe in the days when aeroplanes flew many miles per minute perhaps. He gave a demonstration in a hydroplane at Shatin in 1915 I think.
After that we saw no more of aeroplanes until another Chinese, Lim On, came here about 1919 or thereabouts. C. Rowe, who was manager for Alex Ross's motor department, came as Lim On's manager, and the exhibition was arranged at Happy Valley on a Sunday in aid of flood relief or something or other. Lim On crashed in a small timber yard that used to be where the Chinese garages are now opposite Craigengower. He got into an air pocket and chose the trees for a soft landing, smashing his plane.
"After that the next aeroplanes we saw were those with which Captain C. E. W. Ricou attempted to start a Hongkong-Macao service (or perhaps that was before the Lim On episode). Ricou received no encouragement. By local law, he, not being British and his fliers being all Americans, was not permitted to fly over Hongkong (being a fortified place) at a height of over 150 feet. Since that might have meant hitting a ship, the planes had to come down at the entrance of the harbour. It took about twenty minutes to fly from Macao, and another twenty minutes to taxi to the Statue Square bund. The venture flopped. The fliers went to Canton and some of them got jobs in the budding air force there.
One, Cormick, dropped a bomb near Mok Wing-sun's headquarters when Chan Kwing-ming was staging his umpteenth comeback for Sun Yat-san. The Kwangsi warlord (Mok) fled, and Cormick afterwards boasted that he captured Canton single-handed. In a little while, however, his plane was shot down and he was drowned in one of the rivers. It was kept very quiet. The group gradually broke up. I am told that Abbott, who reappeared later, was one of them.
"Our next planes were those which came with H.M.S. Psyche when she did a short term of service. Here Abbott returned about 1925 with a plane from Manila and a Commercial air company was formed. At its inauguration at Kai Tack on Chinese New Year's Day, Reg. Earnshaw made a parachute jump and was drowned. Crackers had been tied to the plane's tail at the christening, but of course they were rubbish in the dust at taking off - a bad joss beginning. Local aviation since then is known to everybody.
Nestling at the foot of the hills which surround old Kowloon is the Kai Tak aerodrome. A hangar at one end houses a variety of aeroplanes.
Every day planes roar across the flying field and soar way over the hills. The work done out at Kai Tak is quite interesting and the flying has plenty of thrills.
But no-one goes out to watch it. Flying has lost much of its novelty for the average citizen. Even the arrival of famous people like Maryse Hilsz and Senor Fernando Rein Loring failed to draw the crowds.
But it was not always so. On January 3, 1891, the Baldwin Brothers "took the air" at Happy Valley before an immense crowd. They were balloonists and parachutists, it seems. The Hongkong Telegraph had this to say about their exhibition:
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