AVIATION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 153, 14 June 1932, Page 7

AVIATION

MISSING FLIERS TRACKS IN AUSTRALIAN BUSH. REPORT BY NATIVE RUNNERS. (United Press Association—By CableCopyright.) (Received 14, 9.40 a.m.) Perth, June 14. Native runners carried a letter from Father Cubero to the Wyndham police. The message on the cigarette case has not yet been translated. Father Cubero’s letter said: ‘I gauge the time when the articles were dropped to be May 26. Natives have been instructed to search for the two men. There is a possibility that the airmen are still surviving. It is in their favour that the country is very rough and mountainous and there is plenty of fresh water, fish and game.” EARLIER REPORT. Perth, June 13. Information has been received here from the Drysdale mission in NorthWest Australia that the tracks of two white men were discovered by a native messenger attached to the mission 100 miles north-west of Wyndham. The tracks are believed to be those of the crew of the missing Junkers seaplane, Hans Bertram and his companion, who were not reported after their departure from Koepang for Darwin last month. A cigarette case on which the initials “5.8.” and German writing were scratched with a nail, also a handkerchief, were discovered. The tracks were lost on the rocky ridges.

A West Australian Airways aeroplane now located at Wyndham and a local ground party have begun a search of the whole of the north-west territory.

HAUSNER'S MIRACULOUS ESCAPE.

(Received 14, 10.30 a.m.) ' New York, June 13.

A report from the s.s. Circle City states that Hausner, the Atlantic flyer, was still too exhausted to-day to tell his story. He is resting aboard the ship under treatment but there is promise that his health will be completely restored, before the ship arrives at New Orleans in about two weeks. It was decided last night to abandon the ’plane, on which Hausner had drifted for a week after falling a few hundred miles short of the European eoast.

A cable from New York on June 11 stated that the body of an aviator, believed to be that of Stanislaus Hausner, has been picked up from a derelict monoplane. This information was contained in a radio message relayed from the steamer Circle City by the liner Leviathan. The Polish airman Stanislaus Hausner, of Newark, New Jersey, took off on a non-stop flight to Warsaw, Poland, on June 3. A message from Sydney, Nova Scotia, stated that a monoplane believed to have been that of Hausner circled over that city. Then it headed out to sea and disappeared. Nothing further was heard of the airman. Hausner had sufficient petrol to enable him to remain in the air until 5 a.m. on June 5, but he started in bad weather in defiance of meteorologists’ warnings. Hausner left Newark on May 28, but returned six hours later stating that the “artificial horizon” on his blind flying instrument had failed. He held a limited private license, which is the lowest grade available. He was using a Bellanca monoplane of 220 horse-power, capable of flying about 100 miles an hour.