AIRMEN WHO RETURN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 673, 27 May 1929, Page 11

AIRMEN WHO RETURN

RESCUES FROM OBLIVION; RECALLED j SOME HISTORIC INSTANCES The finding of Moir and Owen at Cape Don, 105 miles north-east of Darwin, recalls that many airmen given up for lost have made a dramatic return to civilisation. | For days, sometimes weeks, no sign has emerged from the silent void into which they disappeared, yet luck, resourcefulness, endurance and great courage have in the end all_ contributed to their winning through. Even in these days of marvellous communication such cases are by no means rare. It seems an age, yet in reality it is only four years, since Captain Roald Amundsen, who has since met his death under somewhat similar circumstances,, started on a flight to the North Pole in two flying boats. Leaving King's Bay, Spitsbergen, on May 21, 1925, with six companions, including the American, Mr. Lincoln Ellsworth, he was quickly swallowed up in the fog, and nothing further was heard of the expedition for a mouth. He carried no wireless, i It was assumed that the flying boats must have crashed, and that their intrepid crews had perished in the Arctic wastes, or that at least they were endeavouring to make their way back on foot, yet a month later one of the machines, carrying the six explorers, appeared out of the sjcy to the amazed people on the Norwegian sealer Sjoeliv, the occupants not a hit the worse for their extraordinary experience. Amundsen told how they had flown for seven hours through fog, and lost their bearings, how they had at last decided to descened on to the water in a lane in the ice flow, how the machines became frozen together, and how it took three weeks to free them and prepare a level ground on the icefield for taking oft again. Their rations and petrol supply low, the only thing then to do was to abandon the attempt on the Pole and return straight to King’s Bay, which was done without further mishap. WHEN WILKINS VANISHED A year later Sir G. H. Wilkins, the Australian explorer, vanished for a fortnight in the Arctic regions. With Lieutenant Carl Eilson he set out in a monoplane from Point Barrow, the most northerly promontory of Alaska, in an endeavour to fly over the polar cap to Spitzbergen. He carried wireless, but no message was heard from him for 14 days, and it was thought that the equipment had failed and that continued fog and snowstorms had made flying impossible. He had also to repair a split propeller. The world breathed easily again, and on April 15, in the following year, the daring explorer and his pilot flew over 2,200 miles of frozen seas to Spitzbergen, landing at Green Harbour after being in the air for 20 hours and 20 minutes, with the temperature at 48deg. below zero. HASSELL AND CRAMER

Another providential rescue from oblivion in the Arctic occurred iu September last year, when two American airmen-—Mr. Bert Hassell and Mr. Parker Cramer —were discovered by Eskimos on the coast of Greenland after no news had been heartl of them for a fortnight. These two fearless flyers set out in an airplane from Rockford, Illinois, on August 16, in an attempt to reach Europe by way of Greenland.

They safely crossed Ungava and Davis Strait, but struck the Greenland coast further south than the base camp they were aiming for, and running short of petrol, they were obliged to descend in a wild, unexplored part of the country. For days they plodded on foot in search of Camp Lloyd, living on short pemmican rations and building fires to attract attention. Eventually their smoke fires were seen by a small patty of Eskimos, who reported the matter to the nearest white settlement, from which a rescue party was dispatched, ITALIA SURVIVORS The disaster to the airship Italia is of more recent date. Leaving King’s Bay, Spitzbergen, on May 23 of last year, General Nobile steered a course direct for the North Pole, which was reached half an hour after midnight on May 24. After cruising in the 'vicinity for two and a-hulf hours while atmospheric and magnetic observations were taken, the airship started on the return trip to King’s Bay, but when within 100 miles of her destination she sank rapidly and her gondola, containing General Nobile and eight other members of the crew, struck the ice hummocks and was torn away from the dirigible, the remainder of the party being carried away in the airship, which was never seen again. No word was received from the survivors on the ice for days, until the wireless apparatus was put in order, and it was a month before the half-starved men reached civilisation. THE SOUTHERN CROSS More recent still was the forced landing of the Southern Cross in the wilderness of North-west Australia, which landing is now being investigated by a board of inquiry. Anxiety grew keener as day after day passed, with no word of the airmen, though many searchers were at work. At last Captain Les Holden, flying the air-liner Canberra, found them in a desolate, wild place, where they had subsisted on weeds, a little gruel, and some Sort of shell-fish.

Cages could be multiplied of airmen who have been almost given up for dead, only to make dramatic reappearances when means of communication have been restored. The Australian aviator, Bert Hinkler, was missing for two days before be made his great 15i days’ solo flight from England to Australia. Bad weather forced his airplane down in a lonely part of Poland, the machine was damaged in an attempt to take off again, and during the interval his fate was as sealed to the world as a closed book. Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith, who flew from England to Australia ten years ago, were missed for a day in Northern Australia, but managed to turn up at Anthony Downs on December 15, 1919, with a damaged propeller. The most recent case of all is that of the three Uruguayan aviators who left Montevideo on March 15 last on an attempt to fly to Washington, and who had not been heard of since they passed Guayaquil. A fortnight later three exhausted men staggered into Bogota and related how they had mir-

aeulously escaped from the burning airplane. YVhat occasions amazement in so many of these cases is not that men can completely disappear from human ken for weeks on end in days when wireless communication encircles the globe, but that, once having crasheo in open sea, in desert, and on ice, they are able to survive on the limited rations available until search parties are organised to find them.