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Show SEAPLANE HUNT HELDHOPELESS COMMANDER IN CHARGE OF ILL FATED FLIGHT THINKS THE FLIERS PERISHED Search Will Continue Though Al! Have Practically Given Up Hope Of Ever Finding Any Of The Men Alive San Francisco-Captain Stanford E Moses, commander of the San Francisco-to-Hawaii flight project, sent a radio message to Captain C. S. Jackson of the airplane carrier Langlev, asking his opinion as to how the long search should be maintained for the missing seaplane PN-9 No. 1 and her crew. Captain Jackson replied: "Not ready to express opinion until un-til informed of areas searched by destroyer de-stroyer squadron and other units of battle fleet returning from Somoa." "We have virtualy given up hope of rescuing the crew," Captain Moses said. "We now have eleven destroyers destroy-ers fueling at Honolulu for the purpose pur-pose of engaging in a final survey of the waters were the PN-9 No. 1 came down. We have done all that could be done." Captain Moses said there would be no let down, however, in the navy's search for the bodies of the seaplane's sea-plane's crew and the wreckage of the craft. A radio message was sent to Captain E. B. Jackson, commanding command-ing the airplant carrier Langley today to-day by Captain Moses, directing him .to continue the search in a final effort to locate some evidence of the seaplane's sea-plane's tragic ending. Captain Moses expressed the opinion opin-ion that Commander Jhn Rodgers, yho piloted the ill-fated seaplane, itraveled too fast on the projected inonstop flight to Honolulu and consumed con-sumed his gasoline reserve supplies, prior to the time the seaplane dropped drop-ped from sight on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 1, Commander 'Rodgers was believed to have been hunting for the guardship, Aroostook, on station 1800 miles from San Francisco. Fran-cisco. A storm had come up and the seaplane was circling around in an attempt to locate the Aroostook in expectation ex-pectation of affecting a landing alongside along-side that vessel. The last message jfrom Rodgers indicated that his position po-sition was twenty-five miles north and west of the Aroostook. The seaplane was last seen at 1600 mark when it passed to the north of the U. S. S. Farragut on the 1600 station. If the seaplane hit the osean in its forced descent without the motors running, Captain Moses said, the shock of landing undoubtedly carried car-ried the craft under the surface, in which event the crew probably met death within a few minutes. Despite the increasingly apparent hopeless nature of the search, officers offi-cers and men of the United States navy in Hawaiian water continued con-tinued to seek some trace of Commander Com-mander Rodgers and his seaplane. They expressed themselves as determined deter-mined to save the missing aviators or find some trace confirming their loss. By day, airplanes and surface ships pursue the hunt in the waters where the seaplane last was reported, while submarines and mother ships comb the waters to the north and west, where the airship might have drifted had it made a safe landing. By night the searchlights of the navy play over the empty waves, tracing strange patterns in the clouds. |