FLIGHT TO AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 108, 10 May 1933, Page 9

FLIGHT TO AUSTRALIA

MISS BATTEN TO TRY AGAIN

RECOUPING HER LOSSES

' (Received May 10, 10 a.m.) -. LONDON, May 9. Miss Jean Batten has returned to England to prepare for a second attempt to fly to Australia in September after the monsoons. In the meantime, .by piloting a commercial machine on passenger trips to seaside resoi'ts, she hopes to regain some of the money lost in the flight. Miss Joan Batten, the New Zealand' airwoman, left Lympne on April 9 in an attempt to fly to Australia. She used a Gypsy Moth which was previously the property of the Prince of Wales and which she now partly owns. The aoroplane was, fitted with longrange tanks, had a cruising speed nf 100 miles an hour, and could stay in the air for fourteen hours. Miss Batten did not seek to break records, but hoped to complete the flight in a fortnight. ■ ''.■•'■.■ Miss Batten, who arrived in England in 1929, had spent 130 hours in the air before the flight. She refuelled at Borne and reached' Naples safely, and pushed on to Athens, Aleppo, and Bagdad, where she arrived on April 12, leaving for Bushire two hours : ter. There, she encountered a sand storm and made an emergency landing, on what seemed to bo flat land. It proved to be marsh; her aeroplane tilted and the propeller was broken. She was succoured by friendly tribesmen and arrived in Karachi in a motor-lorry. She was unable to locate her machine, and lost her chance of making a record, which her good Btart had given her. Ten days later she slipped away by steamer to England, although she was still under medical care;