SEARCH FOR MRS PUTNAM

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 150, 13 July 1937, Page 5

SEARCH FOR MRS PUTNAM

-PresB A»gn.-

Lexington's Planes Ready To Start LITTLE HOPE HELD

(By 'i'elegraph-

-Copyrieht.)

(Received 13, 11 a.m.) HONOLULG, July 12. The Lexington is ploughing along at hali-speed to conserve fuel with her 62 seaplanes poised ready for flight. She neared Howland Island to-day with those aboard convinced that only it Mrs. Putnam 's plane is floatmg somewhere on the sea is there even the ghost of a ehance that she and Capiain Noonah Will be able to be rescued alive. Aviators from the Colorado abandonod all hope after piloting three planes for fonr days over the arca south from Howland Isiand, searching every mile of its lonely watcrs, low eoral reefs and sandspits and the virtually uninhabited Phoenix Islands without fnding a trace of the missing flyers. Naval officials, as a ( resnlt Of the failure of this, hunt, are "convinced that Mrs. Putnam wa^s foreed down on the sea rather thafi on aii islfthd. There ie only the faintest possibility that the plane is still afloat and the occupants alive. It is presumed that the navy will abandon the search if coinbing the Waters around Howland Island proves fraitless. It is tinhnown just where the search Will be started to-day or'toniorrow, or whether it will .be extended toward Gilbert Island, where some bcliOve that curfehts might have catried the missiflg pair.