RUMOURS OF HOOK

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1035, 28 July 1930, Page 9

RUMOURS OF HOOK

MAY BE LIVING STILL IN REMOTE VILLAGE FLOODS DELAY SEARCH Reed. 11.30 a.m. DELHI, Sunday. Hope is not abandoned of discovering Eric Hook, the missing airman. Heavy rain and widespread floods are big obstacles to the search party, the members of which think Hook has been taken to a remote village in the foothills where the villagers are puzzled to discover his identity. Eric Hook is a young Australian, whose home was in Sydney and who once worked in Melbourne as an insurance clerk. He set out secretly or his flight to Australia from Lympne (England) on June 20. He took as assistant pilot J. Matthews, who passed all his flying tests on the same day as did Hook, only six days before the start. Although they met with a series of mishaps on the flight, the young fliers were undaunted, and at the end of nine days they had reached Allahabad and were level with Bert Hinkler’s record flight at that stage. Bad weather delayed them a day on the Allahabad-Calcutta stage, but on July 2 they were again in the air and reached Akyab on the way to Rangoon. ft was on the next hop that they crashed. Hook’s wife, who, with their two children, is in England, was on her way to Brighton to celebrate her 22nd birthday when she heard the news of the crash.