AVIATORS' NINE-DAY DRIFT.

Shannon News, 15 September 1925, Page 4

AVIATORS' NINE-DAY DRIFT.

A SPLENDID FAILURE. PLANE BEHAVES WELL ON SMOOTH WATER. (Received Sunday, 7 p.m.) HONOLULU, September 11. In his first official statement, Commander Rodgers said he was forced to land fifty miles north of Aroos, where he took his position. The gave out, killing- the engine and radio transmission. “We made a perfect landing; cut the fabric from the lower wing, rigged a foresail and sailed before the wind, endeavouring to make Oahu. We made fifty miles a day and passed Oahu at forty-five miles’ distance. On the eighth day, we close-hauled for Kauai, and reached a point fifteen miles off Nawyili. We were trying to signal when the submarine picked us up. We had sailed four hundred miles under a jury rig. The ’plane behaved well at all times. The only miscarriage of our plan was due to our failure to find the ship selected to re-fuel. Our only concern was water.”

Commander Rodgers and his crew completed their journey on Thursday night. They arrived at Pearl Harbour on the destroyer MacDonough, receiving a great, welcome, while the world read the story of their adventure. Commander Rodgers and the crew rested on Friday.

Technically, the flight, was completed, as the crew stayed on the seaplane until it grounded, after being afloat for 218 hours. The aviators were ordered to Pearl Harbour hospital to sleep and rest. The plane covered eighteen hundred miles by air and three hundred on ' the stirface of the ocean and was salvaged almost intact. There was still some food aboard, but it was unpalatable.

Great praise is given Commander Rodgers,, who has been promoted to assistant chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. The crew are reticent as to th.e cause of the failure, but the actual conditions differed to the preliminary tests.