Orion to join search

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33533, 14 May 1974, Page 1

Orion to join search

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 13.

The Minister of Defence (Mr Faulkner) has ordered an R.N.ZA.F. Orion to join the search for a couple missing off the Bay of Plenty coast for the last 15 days.

Earlier, the member of Parliament for Tauranga (Mr K. R. Allen), called on the Government to provide an Orion to continue the search for Mr and Mrs R. H. Knights, who went missing, along with their 16ft runabout, on April 28.

The Orion will leave Whenuapai in darkness tomorrow morning and at dawn is expected to be 470 miles north-east of Mount Maunganui.

Soon after dawn an R.N.Z.A.F. Bristol Freighter will begin a coastal search from North Cape to East Cape. The 160 miles by 140 miles area to be searched by the Orion crew tomorrow is the most likely area in which the Knights’ boat could be if it had been blown out to sea.

The Orion will fly to and from the search area in darkness and the crew will use all the available daylight for the search.

Earlier today the Tauranga police said that the ocean search and rescue organisation had refused to order an Orion into the search. However, late this afternoon Mr Faulkner issued a Ministerial directive to have an aircraft join in the hunt for the couple.

Mr Faulkner said tonight that he authorised the immediate search since there seemed to be a slight chance that the couple were still alive and that a full search

had not been made in the more seaward areas. He said that the forces so far had merely fulfilled search and rescue requirements. Now that he had become involved, he had asked the R.N.Z.A.F. to search as soon as possible east of Mount Maunganui and "very much further to seaward than previous searches.”

The Auckland Search and Rescue co-ordinator (Mr O. F. Cossey) said today that sending an Orion to look for the couple would be an impossible task — worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. The Knights could be anywhere between East Cape and North Cape and up to 500 miles off the coast. Their fibreglass boat would not reflect radar signals and searchers would have to depend on eyesight. Mr Cossey said that the position of the dismasted yacht Mirrool had been known within 50 miles last week, when it took an Orion a day and a half to find it. The Knights’ position was not known within 500 miles.