Post by Dave Homewood on Aug 3, 2022 0:02:54 GMT 12
New laser search for pioneer aircraft
By GARRY ARTHUR
Laser beams directed from a helicopter will be used in the Marlborough Sounds next month in the most expensive and well organised expedition yet to try to find the wreckage of the Aotearoa, the first aircraft to fly across the Tasman.
Mr Ken Mabin, aged 65, a retired Christchurch bank officer, has organised an extensive nine-day search of Mount Stokes, where he believes he saw the missing aircraft of Hood and Moncrieff stuck in the treetops 50 years ago.
He was a youth of 16 then and the two pioneer aviators had disappeared, believed lost at sea, only a few months earlier. He has searched the mountain, at 1200 m the higest point in the Sounds, several times since then but this time he will use the latest scientific aids.
Laser equipment will be set up on Arapawa Island and will be beamed on to the search area. A helicopter will fly overhead to trace the beam with a special finder and will either mark the search spot or lower a man by winch to blaze a trail up to the main ridge. Mr Mabin says the greatest problem for searchers is to orient themselves in the heavy bush of Mount Stokes, which is about 6km west of the head of Endeavour Inlet on the outer fringes of the Sounds in a State forest.
“It is heavily wooded and visibility is bad,” he said yesterday. “The mountain is often shrouded in cloud and mist and it gets all the bad weather. The gullies are thick with supplejack and bushlawyer. It is easy to walk up the ridges but a very different matter to search the gullies and ravines.”
Mr Mabin mounted a big search with the help of the Air Force about 10 years ago but this was abandoned because of bad weather.
The latest expedition, which will start on January 22, will be bigger and more fully equipped. Dozens of people, including a doctor and a dentist, will take part, all supplying their own climbing. sleeping, and eating requirements. Mr Mabin said he could still take more volunteers.
He is an experienced bushman himself. “I’ve been hunting, shooting, fishing, and ski-ing,” he said, “and I was a private pilot until this year.” The helicopter will be provided by TV1, which plans to make a documentary of the expedition. Captain George Hood and Lieutentant John Moncrieff both served in World War I, in which Hood lost a leg. They met after the war in the New Zealand Territorial Air Force Reserve.
With a third enthusiast, they acquired a Ryan monoplane, similar to the one in which Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, and christened it Aotearoa for their attempt to be the first to fly the Tasman from Australia to New Zealand. By a toss of the coin, Hood and Moncrieff were chosen to fly the aircraft. They took off from Richmond, Sydney, on the afternoon of January 10, 1928.
They expected to take 14 hours to fly to Trentham, where their wives were waiting to greet them. But the little aircraft never turned up. “These men perished together somewhere out at sea in a gallant if somewhat ill-organised attempt to be the first to fly the Tasman from Australia to New Zealand,” says the “Encyclopedia of New Zealand.”
But no wreckage was found and the crash at sea was just an assumption. There was evidence of the Aotearoa being heard or seen still airborne 12 hours out from Sydney.
Nine months later on September 11, 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith made the first successful crossing from Sydney when he landed the Southern Cross at Christchurch.
Young Ken Mabin was fishing in the Sounds at Easter, 1928, just a few months after the Aoteaora had disappeared. He and his father were in the twin-screw motor yacht Selwyn, owned by Wilfred Barton. They went ashore to clean some fish and Ken Mabin went for a walk up the hill. On his way down again, he saw something flash brightly some distance away on Mount Stokes.
“It was such an unsuual happening,” he recalls. “It was like a piece of galvanised iron catching the sun.” He went back to the boat and collected a binocular to take a closer look.
“Each one of us looked at it and said, ’that’s an aeroplane’. The wings were swept back and the tail was in the air.” The aircraft was stuck in the canopy of trees. It was a clear day and the men were in no doubt that what they could see was an aircraft.
“The Ryan monoplane was one of the first all-metal planes,” said Mr Mabin. It did not occur to them that it might be the Aotearoa until they called at a farmhouse to use the telephone to report their find.
“The farmer went berserk,” said Mr Mabin. “He said he had had enough trouble with people wanting to use his telephone when Hood and Moncrieff went down. Many people had seen it or heard it.”
Many of those persons have been found. Residents of Endeavour Inlet either heard or saw the aircraft at some stage. So did those aboard the vessel Kaiwara, which the aircraft is said to have circled twice.
In spite of the Mabins’ report to the police and to the Navy, no search was made at the time. But many persons have searched the area since. Mr Paul Legg, of Feilding, who will be on Mr Mabin’s January expedition, has made nine searches of the mountain and says it is such difficult country that he has never found the same place twice, let alone the missing aircraft.
Ken Mabin does not expect to find the Aotearoa still perched in the trees or even still in the same vicinity. The area is subject to violent whirlwinds called williwaws, which have been known to lift a truck off the road and dump it metres away. Something like that could easily have happened to the aircraft’s wreckage in the last 50 years and Mr Mabin would not be surprised if it was found a kilometre from where he saw it. If the historic aircraft is found, Mr Mabin thinks it should go the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland.
PRESS, 23 DECEMBER 1978
By GARRY ARTHUR
Laser beams directed from a helicopter will be used in the Marlborough Sounds next month in the most expensive and well organised expedition yet to try to find the wreckage of the Aotearoa, the first aircraft to fly across the Tasman.
Mr Ken Mabin, aged 65, a retired Christchurch bank officer, has organised an extensive nine-day search of Mount Stokes, where he believes he saw the missing aircraft of Hood and Moncrieff stuck in the treetops 50 years ago.
He was a youth of 16 then and the two pioneer aviators had disappeared, believed lost at sea, only a few months earlier. He has searched the mountain, at 1200 m the higest point in the Sounds, several times since then but this time he will use the latest scientific aids.
Laser equipment will be set up on Arapawa Island and will be beamed on to the search area. A helicopter will fly overhead to trace the beam with a special finder and will either mark the search spot or lower a man by winch to blaze a trail up to the main ridge. Mr Mabin says the greatest problem for searchers is to orient themselves in the heavy bush of Mount Stokes, which is about 6km west of the head of Endeavour Inlet on the outer fringes of the Sounds in a State forest.
“It is heavily wooded and visibility is bad,” he said yesterday. “The mountain is often shrouded in cloud and mist and it gets all the bad weather. The gullies are thick with supplejack and bushlawyer. It is easy to walk up the ridges but a very different matter to search the gullies and ravines.”
Mr Mabin mounted a big search with the help of the Air Force about 10 years ago but this was abandoned because of bad weather.
The latest expedition, which will start on January 22, will be bigger and more fully equipped. Dozens of people, including a doctor and a dentist, will take part, all supplying their own climbing. sleeping, and eating requirements. Mr Mabin said he could still take more volunteers.
He is an experienced bushman himself. “I’ve been hunting, shooting, fishing, and ski-ing,” he said, “and I was a private pilot until this year.” The helicopter will be provided by TV1, which plans to make a documentary of the expedition. Captain George Hood and Lieutentant John Moncrieff both served in World War I, in which Hood lost a leg. They met after the war in the New Zealand Territorial Air Force Reserve.
With a third enthusiast, they acquired a Ryan monoplane, similar to the one in which Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, and christened it Aotearoa for their attempt to be the first to fly the Tasman from Australia to New Zealand. By a toss of the coin, Hood and Moncrieff were chosen to fly the aircraft. They took off from Richmond, Sydney, on the afternoon of January 10, 1928.
They expected to take 14 hours to fly to Trentham, where their wives were waiting to greet them. But the little aircraft never turned up. “These men perished together somewhere out at sea in a gallant if somewhat ill-organised attempt to be the first to fly the Tasman from Australia to New Zealand,” says the “Encyclopedia of New Zealand.”
But no wreckage was found and the crash at sea was just an assumption. There was evidence of the Aotearoa being heard or seen still airborne 12 hours out from Sydney.
Nine months later on September 11, 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith made the first successful crossing from Sydney when he landed the Southern Cross at Christchurch.
Young Ken Mabin was fishing in the Sounds at Easter, 1928, just a few months after the Aoteaora had disappeared. He and his father were in the twin-screw motor yacht Selwyn, owned by Wilfred Barton. They went ashore to clean some fish and Ken Mabin went for a walk up the hill. On his way down again, he saw something flash brightly some distance away on Mount Stokes.
“It was such an unsuual happening,” he recalls. “It was like a piece of galvanised iron catching the sun.” He went back to the boat and collected a binocular to take a closer look.
“Each one of us looked at it and said, ’that’s an aeroplane’. The wings were swept back and the tail was in the air.” The aircraft was stuck in the canopy of trees. It was a clear day and the men were in no doubt that what they could see was an aircraft.
“The Ryan monoplane was one of the first all-metal planes,” said Mr Mabin. It did not occur to them that it might be the Aotearoa until they called at a farmhouse to use the telephone to report their find.
“The farmer went berserk,” said Mr Mabin. “He said he had had enough trouble with people wanting to use his telephone when Hood and Moncrieff went down. Many people had seen it or heard it.”
Many of those persons have been found. Residents of Endeavour Inlet either heard or saw the aircraft at some stage. So did those aboard the vessel Kaiwara, which the aircraft is said to have circled twice.
In spite of the Mabins’ report to the police and to the Navy, no search was made at the time. But many persons have searched the area since. Mr Paul Legg, of Feilding, who will be on Mr Mabin’s January expedition, has made nine searches of the mountain and says it is such difficult country that he has never found the same place twice, let alone the missing aircraft.
Ken Mabin does not expect to find the Aotearoa still perched in the trees or even still in the same vicinity. The area is subject to violent whirlwinds called williwaws, which have been known to lift a truck off the road and dump it metres away. Something like that could easily have happened to the aircraft’s wreckage in the last 50 years and Mr Mabin would not be surprised if it was found a kilometre from where he saw it. If the historic aircraft is found, Mr Mabin thinks it should go the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland.
PRESS, 23 DECEMBER 1978
