GREATEST N.Z. AIR SEARCH FAILS YESTERDAY TO FIND ANY TRACE OF AIR LINER “KAKA”

Grey River Argus, 29 October 1948, Page 3

GREATEST N.Z. AIR SEARCH FAILS YESTERDAY TO FIND ANY TRACE OF AIR LINER “KAKA”

AREA TWH TO BE EXTENDED IN TARANAKI (Per Press Association). WELLINGTON, October 28. Fourteen low-flying aircraft searched 11,000 square miles of the Central North Island to-day fob traces of the missing air liner, “Kaka.” It was a fruitless mission. Tired crews, who accomplished more than 100 hours of intensive flying, between dawn and dusk, returned to their bases with nothing to report from a day’s operations that represented the greatest air search in the history of New Zealand aviation. There were eight other planes also engaged in the search.

WEATHER TO-DAY NOT THE BEST

Bad Aveather for the search is expected to-mor-row, when the search area is to be extended south to include the Stratford district.

WESTERN AREA SEARCH FRUITLESS

To-day’s searches were intensive in th? Kawhia-Raglan area, where Mt. Pirongia stands as a 31U0ft sentinel. They yielded no results. Police parties have to-day covered the slopes of the mountain. There was this morning a report of possible wreckage, on its southern side. This was discounted when it was later identified as a white scar left by a recent fall of earth.

To-day a police party left Te Awamutu on receipt of a report from two men, who, while travelling in lorries from there to Kawhia this morning, saw an object which seemed like wreckage on the southern slopes of Mount Pirongia, north-west of Ginn’s mill. John Liddell, a motor mechanic, of Kawhia, and his employer, Lewis Hooper, told the police at Te Awamutu at mid-day that while earlier travelling from Kawhia they saw an object, which might be the missing plane, on the south slope of Mount Pirongia, about two miles north-west from Ginn’s mill. The object was tibout three-quarters of the way up the mountainside. It proved to be a slip. As well as the Te Awamutu police party, a party from Ginn’s mill went searching for the wreckage. Shortly after 1 o’clock a search plane circling over the mountain was in touch by radio with the ground party working its way toward the object seen from the lorries. At midday Maoris at Hauturu, two miles east of Kawhia, reported that they had seen on the bush-clad slopes what resembled wreckage, whereas it was the slip. POSSIBLE LANDING NEAR KAWHIA

Kawhia reports suggested the Kaka might have come down between there and Mt. Pirongia. The Kawhia postmaster, Mr C. Humphrey, heard an aerocraft over Kawhia harbour between 2.30 and 3 p.m. on Saturday. It was also heard by Mrs Brown, of Owhiro, and Mr and Mrs Verntsen, farmers further up Kawhia harbour. Mr Humphrey said, there was a severe rain storm at 2.30 p.m., and shortly after that, when the harbour was completely obscured by a heavy haze right down to the water, a large plane was heard approaching from a south-westerly direction.. The aircraft then turned sharply at right angles and proceeded up the harbour in a north-easterly direction towards Pirongia. Mr Humphrey said: “This plane sounded like a Lockheed Electra and, although we could not see it, we knew by the sound of its engines that it was flying very low. When a plane is above the hills it makes a different noise from that which it makes when it is flying low below the level of the hills. This aircraft was flying very low. As it went up the harbour I listened to hear if it would climb, as I thought at the time that the pilot would have to climb if he wished to avoid a possible crash”. An aircraft was heard flying verj' low at the time by Mrs Brown, of Owhiro, and further up the harbour Kir and Mrs Verntsen heard an aircraft. All the persons who heard it considered that it was an Electra on its wav in to land at Rukuhia aerodrome at Hamilton. They did not he A ' the aircraft return, and doubt whether it crashed into the sea in the Kawhia region.

“I am most distressed by this disaster”,-Sir Leonard Isitt, chairman of directors of the National Airways Corporation, said to-day following h?s return to Auckland by air yesterday after a world tour. There was nothing, however, that could be said or done until the facts were available.

Bay of Plenty Search

WELLINGTON, October 28.

Sixteen aircraft took off in fine weather from various points at dawn to-day to search for the Kaka, the area ‘of search being extended so as to be bounded by a line stretching from Wha.katane (in the east of the Bay of Plenty) up to Auckland.