KINGSFORD SMITH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22318, 16 January 1936, Page 9

KINGSFORD SMITH

MEDIUM ON HIS FATE " ALIVE ON CORAL ISLAND" LONDON. Jan. 14 The Sun-Herald news service says the Foreign Office has received a report from Sir Hubert Montgomery, British Minister at The Hague, concerning information about Sir Charles Kingsford Smith which is alleged to have been given at a seance at The Hague. The Foreign Office has advised the Commonwealth Government, the Admiralty and the Air Ministry of the report. It is said that an elderly woman medium received a message from the spirit of the Dutch pilot Captain Beekman, who was killed in the "flying hotel" in Irak in December, 1934, to the effect that Sir Charles "has not yet passed over," but is on a coral island, near Benculen, on the southwest coast of Sumatra. He is said to be in great distress and danger, and the "message" urges immediate help. The message was stated to be intended for the British Legation, to which is was accordingly sent.

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his co-pilot, Mr. T. Pethybridge, left Lympne, Kent, on Wednesday, November 6, in the Lady Southern Cross on a flight to Australia. They were seen passing over Calcutta at 9.6 p.m. on the Thursday, and Mr. C. J. Melrose, who also was on a flight to Australia, reported on reaching Singapore that their machine, the Lady Southern Cross, had flown abovs him at 2 a.m. on the Friday, over the Bay of Bengal, 150 miles from land. Sumatra lies to the south of the Federated Malay States, and is on the west and south of Singapore.

The aeronautical editor of the Scientific American, Mr, Stanley Beach, who claimed that he had a system of locating aviators by means of psychic research, told a representative of the Australian Associated Press on November 18 that he had employed a male German medium to attempt to locate Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. The medium said that Sir Charles and his companion were dead, that the aeroplane had crashed in the sea 75 miles from land, and floated for 3 hours 32 seconds.

Mr. Beach tlion produced a map and asked the medium to mark the spot on which the aeroplane came down. The medium marked a spot at latitude 17.254, longitude 97.727, approximately at the head of the Gulf of Martaban, east of Rangoon, Lower Burma. He said the wing of the aeroplane should be found to lie 6S miles off the shore where it was last seen.