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.
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