A New Zealand writer has rubbished a Sydney filmmaker's claims he has found the final resting place of Australian aviation pioneer Sir Charles Kingsford Smith.
Sir Charles was the first pilot to fly the Tasman in both directions, in 1928.
Seven years later he and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge disappeared without trace while attempting to break the record for a flight between England and Australia in the Lady Southern Cross.
Nearly 75 years on, Damien Lay believes he has solved what he called Australia's "last great mystery" by locating the wreckage of the Lady Southern Cross off the Burmese coast on February 24.
Mr Lay said he found the wreckage under 20m of water and mud in a bay of remote Aye Island, after a five-day search which involved 63 dives and sonar tracking.
But New Zealand writer Ian Mackersey, who wrote 'Smithy: The Life of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith', dismissed Mr Lay's claim as "nonsense".
Mackersey quoted two aircraft accident experts from the Australian Defence Ministry Aeronautical Research Laboratory who, in 1992, concluded: "The two occupants bodies would have quite quickly disappeared without trace and so, in those tropical waters, would all the wooden components - followed eventually by the light alloy sections which would include quite a bit of the engine.
"All that will remain somewhere, probably spread across 200 yards of the ocean floor, will be the few steel parts of the engine."
The discovery site was also wrong given the last known sighting of Sir Charles over the Andaman Sea off the south Burma coast, Mackersey said.
"The Lady Southern Cross never arrived in Singapore. The overtake position was between 50 and 100 miles (80-160km) south of Aye Island," he said.
"There is no way that the object on the sea bed can be Smithy's aeroplane.
"Alas, the discovery claim is nonsense."
