MISHAP ON JOURNEY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19700, 4 August 1938, Page 7

MISHAP ON JOURNEY

ROUND-WORLD FLYER SERVICE PLANE DAMAGED LONDON, Aug. 2. A message from Horta, in the Azores, says that the seaplane Nordwind conveying Hans Bertram in the course of his round-the-world flight by passenger and commercial air services, collided with a yacht when alighting. The nose and a wing of the seaplane were damaged. Hans Bertram left Berlin at 3 a.m. on July 15 on a round-the-world flight by passenger and commercial air services. He planned to go first to Bagdad in a Lufthansa aeroplane, and from there to Karachi, Calcutta, Bangkok, Hongkong, Manila, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York and Lisbon, returning to Berlin on August 3. The itinerary planned covered 24,400 miles. Bertram, a German airman, was born at Remscheid in 1905. Before the adventure that made him famous he had had a successful career in aviation. On a flight to Australia in a seaplane with Adolf Klausner in 1932 he had to make a forced landing off the lonely coast of North Australia near the mouth of the Berkeley River on' May 15. Small Boat From Floats The flyers made a small boat out of one of the floats of the aeroplane and explored the coast for a time. Although they passed within threequarters of a mile of a steamer, their signals did not attract attention. Their provisions were a packet of biscuits and some tins of fruit. When these were consumed they lived on snails, lizards, leaves of plants and water from the radiator. They could not shoot game, as they had lost their revolvers while swimming a river. By this time Klausner had collapsedA search was in progress,'but an aeroplane passed overhead and a launch went close to their camp without the crew seeing them. On June 13 a cigarette box with a message on it and a handkerchief, marked “H.B. weie found by natives, and two days later their abandoned machine was located. The two men had given up hope when they were eventually discovered by natives on June 22 after being missing for over five weeks. Klausner, who was very ill, returned home by sea, but Bertram had his seaplane repaired and, continuing his (light, reached Berlin on April 17, 1933.