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Otago Daily Times, Issue 20691, 13 April 1929, Page 12

THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

The intelligence which we are gratified to be able to publish this morning of the discovery of the monoplane Southern Cross and of the safety of the crew is almost better than was to have been expected. It is a fortnight to-day since the Southern Cross left the Richmond aerodrome, Sydney, and it is thirteen days since any communication was received from the crew. The conditions that prevailed at the time at which the last message from the plane was received and the entire lack of any subsequent news were compatible only with the assumption that a forced landing had to be effected in circumstances of extreme difficulty or that the plane had “ crashed.” In either event it was possible that the occupants, if-they had been fortunate enough to escape injury or death, were faced with the risk of starvation, since the country where they were likely to come down is practically uninhabited, except by blacks, and is of a character so desolate and inhospitable that the chances of finding food and of sustaining life, pending the px-ovision of relief, would be somewhat remote. In the circumstances, a great many people xixust have abandoned the hope that the airmen‘would be recovex’ed ajjvc. All the greater 1 , therefore, will be the sense of relief afforded by the information that Squadron-Leader KingsfordSmith and his companions are safe. Beyond that all-important fact, there is nothing vex-y definite in the news which wc publish this morning. The statement that the Southern Cross has been discovered may itself coixvny more than wc are actually justified in believing. The personnel of the Southern Cross has, howpvcr, been located' and food has been dropped to its members from the air, and this will simplify the task to which tlxo rescue parties will now have to direct their energies. It may lie surmised that on the Sunday on which the plane was unable, in the blinding rainstorms, to pick up its objective, Wyndham, where a landing would seem in any circumstances to have been impracticable, it proceeded as far north as the Drysdalc mission station—since it is reported to have been observed there —and then swung round to the south-west, flying in the direction of the King George IV mission station, and finally coming to earth on the mud flat on which the crew have been sighted, 40 miles south of that station, and appni’ently almost due west from Wyndham. Probably the Southern Cross was seriously, if not irretrievably, damaged in the descent, and it is obvious that the wireless equipment was rendered useless. The comforting fact, however, is that, whatever privations they may have suffered, the airmen themselves arc safe, and even though they may be temporarily marooned their rescue will sooner or later be effected. • Now Zealand, which has its own national interest in the members of the crew, will rejoice whole-heartedly with Australia in the welcome news that was ti'ansmitted yesterday by Captain Holden from the aex‘oplane Canberra. i