WAR MYSTERY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 February 1943, Page 4

WAR MYSTERY

AIRMAN’S BODY ON RAFT. TRAGEDY IN ATLANTIC. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, February 20. The United Press correspondent in Natal, Brazil, says that a small rubber life-raft bearing the body of Major Arthur Mills, of the Army Air Corps Ferry Command, drifted on to the beach after a voyage of probably more than 1000 miles across the South Atlantic. With the body were identification tags indicating that six others died and were buried from the raft, after the plane, which was travelling from Africa, was forced down into the sea. There was also a colonel’s eagle insigna bent into a crude fish-hook, fish.bories, and a notebook, the property of the navigator, in which was drawn a prophetic skull and crossbones and a crude sketch of a grave, dated Febru-’ ary 15, a few days before the flight. The notebook did not contain any other entry. The names of Mills’s companions have not been revealed. He apparently died without food and water two or three days before the raft was beached. The circumstances constitute one of the wierdest mysteries of the war, the story of which will never be told,