AEROPLANE AND STEAMER TO SEARCH.

Otago Witness, Issue 3853, 17 January 1928, Page 26

AEROPLANE AND STEAMER TO SEARCH.

LAST SIGNAL FROM AIRMEN. WELLINGTON, January 11. Mr A. M'Nicol, trustee of the Tasman Flight Fund, to-day discussed with the Ministers of Defence, Finance, Labour, and Health the situation that has arisen through the absence of any information concerning a landing of the aeroplane or its whereabouts. As a result of the deliberations, he gathers that the searching aeroplane will have a four hours and a-half cruising. radius, and will refuel at Trentham on the exhaustion of supplies. It will not be able to signal by wireless, but as the Harbour Board tug Toia, which the Government is chartering to help in the search, is wirelessly equipped, any information as to a floating raft or such like that may be reported by the searching aeroplane on its return to the base, will be capable of being transmitted wirelessly to the tug at sea. Mr M'Nicol gathered in his inquiries this morning, in technical and official circles, that the genuineness of the last automatic signal at 5.22 p.m. on Tuesday cannot be doubted, and that it was expected that the signals would be lost as the aeroplane neared the New Zealand coast.

At 5.22 p.m. on Tuesday, Mr M'Nicol adds, the aeroplane would have been flying a little-over 12 hours, and, assuming .it had maintained an average speed and progress to- it s ; objective, should nbt have been very far distant—say, 300 miles—-from New Zealand. Across its

track New . Zealand would be lying as a land mass with a width of not less than about 800 miles, rather a big target to miss. ■ Again, if there was a drift away from the route it would probably be a drift, southward, and the aeroplane would hardly drift far enough south to miss Otago. In western Otago and in the Fiordland there are large unsettled tracts where men might exist for days without being seen or heard of. and down on that Otago coast are several good landing beaches.