CAIRO TO CAPE RACE.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 36, 11 February 1920, Page 5

CAIRO TO CAPE RACE.

CAPT. COCKERILL'S PROGRESS. LONDON, February 10. Captain Cockcrill, the leading competitor in the air race from Cairo to the Cape, left Assouan this morning for Khartoum. Colonel van Ryneveld, a South African competitor, has arrived at Solium, on the coast of Egypt. The Australian competitors, Lieutenant F. S. Cotton and Lieutenant W. A. Townsend, have arrived at Le Bour£et, in the south of France, en route'to Egypt. A message from Rome states that the mechanic of one of the British aeroplanes making the flight to the Cape was decapitated by the screw of'the machine while attempting to release it from the mud when leaving Brinrfisi.— (A. and X.Z.) ROME-TOKIO FLIGHT. ROME, February 10. The leading machine in the Rome to Tokio flight landed in the Syrian desert owing to adverse weather. Bedouin chiefs are entertaining the occupants.— (A. and X.Z. Cable.) CAPT. MATTHEWS' CRASH. SYDNEY, this day. Captain C. G. Matthews, pilot of the Sopwith aeroplane, which left London in an attempt to fly to Australia on October 21, cabled from Bunder Abbas, on the Persian coast, on February 8, that he left Bushire at dawn on February 3 for Karachi, a direct distance of 1100 miles. He struck a blinding sandstorm after flying 300 miles, and was forced to land on a shelving beach, 20 miles west of Bunder Abbas, in a cross wind, travelling at 40 miles an hour. A high tide was also running. "We crashed," he states, "and the machine was badly damaged, but we are trying to repair it here. Both of us are well." —(A. and N.Z. Cable.)