"SMITHY'S" FATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 283, 29 November 1937, Page 9

"SMITHY'S" FATE.

AWAITING NEWS.

SEARCH PENDING.

BROTHER IN AUCKLAND.

WRECKAGE NEAR ISLAND. Definite word of tlic Tate that, overtook (he Into Sir Chnrle* Kingsford Smith. famniiA Auwtra linn aviator, is expo-ted within n. Abort period. That wax a «tntcment made this morning bv Mr. R. H. Kiriffofo-.H Smith, «,f (>„kbind, Culiforniii. a brother of the lost fl vr r who arrived in Auckland by the Anrn'nei. Mr. King*for.l Smith pi.w his faith in an r.\|iedit ion which, he says, will prohahly lune started l.y now in the final priirch. "I expect to hear any day now of the fate that, overtook my hrother," he p.lid, and added: "If he who killed." To that. slightly expre**ed hope Mrs. Kingsford Smith did not give concurrence. "There is. no hope of that. J think he ha* gone." she *aid. Mr. Klujrsfonl Smith recalled, however, that another lost pilot had been found alive after being missing for a period of two years.

He told then of the little inland of Aye, in the Gulf of Andaman, where the hopes nf acarchera now centred. Off thin inland four months ago an Englishman named Hodder had found the part of iin undercarriage, one wheel and a tyre that were believed to he part of the Lockheed monoplane in which "Smithy" had been flying from England to Australia in November, 19.V», when he came to grief. It was an inland that wait not marked on the aviation charts, though its cliffs rose 8»W feet into, the air.

"The belief now is fhat my brother übipped the cliff* there," said Mr. Kingsford Smith. ''When he was last neen by Jimmy Melrose he wa* heading on a rourse. that would have taken him in that vicinitv."

Mr. Hodder. whose home was in !Monnmein. Burma, had communicated •with Mr. Kingsford Smith of his find, and had informed him thnt he was associating himself with an nviator. Mr. A. Whitehead, in an expedition to rxplore the cliffs of the island and the sea bottom in the rejrion. The main expedition would be by launch, and divers would be taken. The expedition ■would be undertaken as soon as the monsoon season was over and that would ho about this time.

Mr. and Mrs. Kingsford Smith will spend a short, holiday in Auckland a* the Riicsts of their daughter, Mrs. John Slannagc.

A cable received from Sydney last ■week recorded that Mr. Whitehead. arriving in Sydney from England, had told of plans for the expc<lition that wm to leave Burma soon to search an uncharted island 1"> miles off the coast. "Those who are to undertake the •carch," said Mr. Whitehead, "are so convinced that the aeroplane crashed in the sea near an unmapped island in the Bay of Bengal, that they intend to search not only by land and nir. but to rxplore the bottom of the sea."