FATE OF ULM.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20509, 10 January 1935, Page 5

FATE OF ULM.

Landed South and Beyond Honolulu. COMMANDER LYON’S VIEW.” (Special to the “ Star.”) SAX FRANCISCO, December 19. The ill-fated Star of Australia, its motors silenced by lack of fuel, volplaned to a splashy landing on the Pacific at a point 300 miles south and beyond Honolulu. That was the opinion expressed by a man who “knows that country,” and. who has been over the same route and faced the same gasoline shortage emer gency —Harry Lyon, navigator of Sii Charles Kings ford-Smith’s Southern Cross in the epochal trans-Pacific flight in 1928. Lyon, in recounting Jus own experiences in the 1928 flight, in which Charles T. P. Ulm also participated, based his assertions on the speed of the U'pi monoplane, the probable drift with the wind, and technical problems encountered in a flight of that kind. He also revealed that in a conversation with Sir Charles Kings ford-Smith in San Francisco several weeks ago, the airman predicted disaster for the Star of Australia, a prediction based on the belief that the monoplane was unsuited to make a hop so long and so beset with perils. “That’s no joy hop,” Lyon declared. “There are no moments to spare in lost flying, for your gasoline supply is diminishing every minute. So it is vital that you "keep 'your hearings. They probablv got out of the path of the Honolulu radio direction beam, and perhaps failed to take into account the steady drift. As a result, they came down far south and beyond Honolulu. 1 know that territory pretty well, for I’ve been over it.