MYSTERY OF LOST FLYERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 487, 17 October 1928, Page 1

MYSTERY OF LOST FLYERS

COURSE OF SOUTHERN CROSS WHAT AN ERROR MEANT (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, To-day. New light upon the possible fate of the unfortunate Captain Hood and Lieutenant Moncrieff, who perished mysteriously last summer when attempting to fly the Tasman Sea, is shed by the return flight of the Southern Cross. Between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., New Zealand time, states a navigating officer who plotted the line of the flight upon a chart from the radioed reports, the airplane swung round until she was headed for a spot 150 miles south of Sydney and 180 miles south of the course which the plane pursued during the previous liour. When thig occurred the Southern Cross was 410 miles from Cape Egmont. Had such an error been made earlier it would have meant a difference of over 400 miles to the plane by the time that the Tasman Sea was conquered. This appears to colour one of the views advanced at the time of the search for Moncrieff and Hood, that, being inexperienced in navigation, they had missed New Zealand altogether. A slight intensification of the drift from the course set by the Southern Cross, if made on the way from Australia to New Zealand, would nean that an airplane which set out for Wellington would land on Stewart Island.