Warning Telegram

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 671, 24 May 1929, Page 9

Warning Telegram

WAS HANDED TO SMITH Just as Flight Commenced (United. B.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) SYDNEY, Today. THE inquiry into the forced landing of the Southern Cross 1 has been adjourned until Monday at Melbourne. Harold Litchfield, the plane’s navigator, has joined with his comrades in describing certain newspaper reflection on the flight as malicious lies.

Clifford Bennett, employed at the I Richmond airdrome, stated in evidence that when an American engineer, Mr. Maidment, was overhauling the Southern Cross after the Pacific flight, he removed a box of emergency rations. In so doing he remarked to witness: “Do not lose sight of this box. It contains emergency foodstuffs for the flyers.” The box was placed on the floor of the hangar at Richmond. Witness said he never saw it afterwards. Frank Burke, attached to Richmond airdrome, said he received a message over the telephone from the postmaster at Richmond on March 30 signed by Captain Clive Chateau, of Wyndham, saying the weather was fine, with drying winds. Later witness received another message warning the flyers against starting for Wyndham without receiving a final “0.K.” He said he handed that message to Squadron-Leader Kingsford Smith just as the flight was commenced. Harold Litchfield, navigator of the Southern Cross, was asked by Mr. Hammond what he thought, of suggestions made in a certain newspaper to the effect that the crew of the Southern Cross had arranged beforehand to lose themselves and that somebody was to find them. They are malicious lies, replied the witness. Continuing, Litchfield said that owing to the impossibility of taking observations on the flight he had to rely on dead reckoning most of the time. After leaving the Port George IV. mission station and turning back

to seek it a southerly drift carried the machine to the south of the mission. The inquiry was adjourned until Monday at Melbourne. MR. McKAY MISSING LEFT SYDNEY IN MOTH FOR MELBOURNE NO SIGN OF AIRPLANE Reed. 1.10 p.m. MELBOURNE, Today. Mr. C. N. McKay, president of the Victorian Aero Club and a member of the special Air Committee which lias been flaking evidence in Sydney, left for Melbourne in a Gipsy Moth, and has not yet arrived. There is no indication! of his whereabouts. It is thought that he was forced down by bad weather. TO BRING IN BODIES PARTY GOES OUT SOON TO KOOKABURRA ADELAIDE, Thursday. The truck which is being fitted out to bring back from the desert the bodies of Lieutenant Keith Anderson and Mr. R. S. Hitchcock, of the illfated airplane Kookaburra, is to leave Adelaide probably tomorrow for Central Australia. It is expected that the trip will occupy several days. Messrs. F. Nottle and L. Miles will be on the truck. They will drop supplies of water every 10 miles. No airplane will be needed. Two leaden coffins are to he carried.