Weak Legs

When the retractable landing gear on one of Imperial Airways' three new luxurious, 22-passenger Frobishers jammed over Croydon Airport last month, its passengers jauntily drank a toast in champagne "To disaster--if it comes!" A mechanic got the wheels down pn that occasion.

One day last week, with wheels down, another Frobisher dropped down on roomy Croydon. Its legs collapsed, and it slid ignominiously to a stop on its belly. This time the passengers, 21 of them, were plain scared, thoroughly shaken up. Imperial imperturbably grounded the 234-mile-an-hour ships to get the bugs out of the landing gear. At week's end the ships were restored to service. The mishap, said bland Imperial, was "due to the unusual state ol the airdrome surface, not to a mechanical defect." Nineteen-year-old Croydon is one of the oldest and best-tended air fields on earth.

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