AEROPLANE AND BODY FOUND

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24600, 23 June 1945, Page 6

AEROPLANE AND BODY FOUND

WRECKAGE IN HILLS

IDENTITY NOT ESTABLISHED (P.A.) WELLINGTON„*June 22. The burnt-out wreckage of a Tiger Moth aircraft and the remains of a body were found in a steep gully in the south Karori hills yesterday, afternoon. Tlie body had not been identified to-night. .... The aircraft was found in the edge of dense bush in a steep gully about two miles off the south Makara road by a farm hand who was looking for his dog. The aeroplane had evidently been there for some considerable tl! A. e party of police and members of the accident inspection section of the Royal New Zealand Air Force visited the scene, and the body was removed. An effort is being made to discover the identity of a Tiger Moth. On August 23, 1942, a R.N.Z.A.F. plane engaged on Army co-operation work with a Home Guard unit went niissing in the Makara-Karori area. This machine, however, carried two men. The pilot was Pilot Officer Mason I. Elliot, and the passenger Lieutenant Harold F. Ballard, a Wellington lawyer and member of the Home Guard. The search at the time by hundreds of Home Guard and Army personnel, members of the Lands and Survey Department, and R.N.Z.A.F. planes was unsuccessful. , , .. It is believed that several other planes which have been lost during the war could have crashed in the same area.