OBSERVERS SURE THEY SAW ’PLANE

Evening Star, Issue 19762, 12 January 1928, Page 5

OBSERVERS SURE THEY SAW ’PLANE

Possible Landing in Remote Spot

Close Search of Coast Begun

H.M.S. Dunedin to Reconnoitre

Ocean

Hope has by no means been abandoned that the missing aviators, Lieutenant Moncrieff and Captain Hood, have reached the coast and made a forced landing in some remote spot. Captain Right, the third member of the expedition, advises from Sydney that a long southerly drift was expected, enlarging the distance to be covered, and making it necessary to land at the first practicable place. Also, apparently it was arranged that, failing Trentham, an attempt was to be made to land at Paekakariki or Foxton beaches, which in some degree enhances the very positive statement from the two observers at the former place that they saw a monoplane before 9 p.m. on Tuesday night. The statement of the

master of the Kaiwarra that he saw a ’plane’s light and the dropping of flares is also circumstantial, but further investi= gallon of the bulk of the reports only shows how little basis there really was for them. In some cases both the lights and the alleged hum of the engine have been traced to motors on hillsides.

In any case, hope has not been abandoned, and a close search is being prosecuted bytlhe Government and the friends of the airmen. A D.H, biplane, based on Blenheim and supported by tugs, is searching between Stephen’s Island, Fox* ton, Farewell Spit, and Blenheim. West Coast beaches are being reconnoitred, and H.M.S. Dunedin is racing to sea to search the area from which the last signal was received at 5.22 p.m. on Tuesday.