An Australian filmmaker yesterday said he had found the crash site where legendary aviation pioneer Sir Charles Kingsford Smith died in the Bay of Bengal in 1935.
Mystery has surrounded the disappearance of Kingsford Smith and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge while they were trying to break the record for a flight between England and Australia.
But Sydney documentary filmmaker Damien Lay told a news conference he was certain he and a search team had found the wreck of their Lockheed Altair, the Lady Southern Cross, off the coast of Myanmar.
Lay said he had sonar images of a plane under 20m of water and mud in a bay of remote Aye Island, which matched those of the Altair.
“The Altair itself is a very unique aircraft. There were, I think, only four Altairs built,” he said.
“If it is a Lockheed Altair it wouldn’t be anything other than the Lady Southern Cross and the aircraft flown by Kingsford Smith,” he said.
Lay said the images would be taken to the aircraft makers in the US for analysis and a recovery operation would begin in November.
The plane’s state of preservation, as a result of it being covered in mud, meant the remains of Kingsford Smith and Pethybridge might also be found, he said.
Kingsford Smith, who was born in Australia in 1897, became a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I and went on to pioneer commercial aviation and break several flying records.
He made the first trans-Pacific flight from the US to Australia in 1928, and in 1933 set a new record for a solo flight from England to Australia. He was knighted in 1932 for his services to aviation.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
RSS