FAITH IN AUSTRALIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21555, 28 July 1933, Page 9

FAITH IN AUSTRALIA

EVE OF ATLANTIC FLIGHT RADIO OPERATOR ENGAGED (Received July 2V, 7.35 p.m.) LONDON, July 27 Messrs. C. T. P. Dim, G. U. Allen and Captain P. G. Taylor flew in the Faith in Australia to Dublin to-day to commence their flight across tho Atlantic. They left London at 4.40 a.m.l A wireless operator, Mr. J. Edwards, has been added to the crew, which now numbers four. On the arrival of tho party in Dublin they said that favourablo weather reports had led to a rush to face the lastminute difficulties in leaving Heston. Friends had slept in the open on a hot, cloudless night in order to bid farewell this morning to the fliers, who are confident of success. Mr. Ulra said they would not go if the flight were dangerous. Ho had made sure of everything and knew the positions of all the ships that will be crossing the Atlantic in the next 36 hours. Flares would bo carried. His wife, in Sydney, realised that the venture was safe. Mr. Allen spent last night reading a book on airships and Atlantic crossings. LITHUANIANS' FATE THEORY AS TO CAUSE POSSIBLY SHOT DOWN PARIS, July 26 A Strasburg newspaper, the Dernieres Xouvelles, says it is widely reported that tho aeroplane Litliuanica, which crashed with two Lithuanian airmen who were flying to their native land from New York, was mistaken for a police aeroplane and shot down by German frontier guards. These, guards, it is said, have been ordered to fire on unknown aeroplanes crossing the Polish frontier. Tho newspaper adds that the German anti-aircraft defences on the Polish frontier are equipped with a chain of concrete machine-gun emplacements.

Tho wreckage of the aeroplane Litliuanica and tho bodies of Stephen Darius and Stanley Girenas, the fliers referred to in the cablegram, were found on July 17 in a pine forest at Kuhdamm, North Prussia, 380 miles from Kovno, Lithuania. It was reported that tho airmen mistook tho tree tops for a meadow and tried to land owing to a shortage of petrol.