HOOK'S BODY FOUND

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 8, 31 July 1930, Page 6

HOOK'S BODY FOUND

EXPEDITION’S DISCOVERY TRAGIC END TO LONG PLIGHT RANGOON, July 30, After a lengthy search for Mr Eric Hook, who with Mr James Matthews, came down in the Burmese jungle while‘on a flight to Australia, the expedition discovered the body of the missing aviator. Mr James Matthews, formerly mechanic to Mr Bert Hinkler, accompanied by a rich voui/g man, Mr Eric Hook, secretly left Lympne aerodrome, Kent, at dawn on June 20, on an attempt to break Mr Hinkler’s record flight to Australia. The departure of the two men was not reported until late at night. Their aeroplane was not. equipped with wireless. Messrs Matthews and Hook hud only arrived at Lympne on the night of June 19 when they arranged to leave at dawn next day in a Moth aeroplane named Dryasgl. They took a heavy store of petrol, which made luking-oft difficult. Each holds a pilot’s certificate, but ■their actual flying experience has not been extensive. The fliers spent the first night at Lyons, then flow to Marseilles and on to Rome, Pisa, Catania, Heliopolis (Lower Egypt), Gaza. Bagdad, Bushirc, Jask and Karachi (India)’. They landed at Karachi iu the teeth of a monsoon cyclone on June 27. Their next landing was at Bum diiin, near Calcutta, which place they left for Rangoon, arriving that day at Akyab, Burma, north of Rangoon. Taung-’gup, near where the airmen crashed, is’ a small town situated about 140 miles south of Akyab and a feu miles inland. On July 12 a message 1 ivas received from Rome that Matthews had arrived there and that his associate had been loft dying An expedition had been searching for Hook for nearly a fortnight, it being thought that he was with natives in the interior. ■ I