[5] He then joined the military and was first an infantryman with 3rd Battalion, the Sherwood Foresters, before he began pilot training at the age 24 with Royal Flying Corps (RFC).

[22] In 1929, he represented Imperial Airways on the development of flight-proving routes from South Africa, performed jointly with the Air Ministry.

[14] Download coordinates as: On Monday, 15 March 1937, Wolley-Dod boarded a dual-pilot DH.86 (De Havilland Express), registration G-ACVZ "Jupiter" with 25-year-old wireless operator Gwyn Evans Langman, and 44-year-old pilot George Barker Holmes.

[24][29][30] According to Under-Secretary of State for Air Sir Philip Sassoon, "The pilot was heard at 10.58 pm to inform Brussels that he was flying in good visibility.

"[31] The following morning, several planes—an Imperial liner from Croydon and several aircraft of the Sabena Air Line in continental Europe—were dispatched to search for the missing flight crew.

[14] A Nottingham newspaper stated that "several Belgian military planes and all available machines of the Sabena air line went out early" to search.

[32] The Belgian planes searched the area between Hasselt and the Belgian-German border; according to the Midland Daily Telegraph, they also "patrolled the line usually taken by airliners to Cologne.

It is recalled that it was near this area that the body of Max Wenner, the Shropshire landowner, who fell from a Cologne to Brussels airliner lay missing for four days in January.

[31] According to the Evening Standard of Stoke-on-Trent, two German Deutsche Luft Hansa planes were also sent to search between Cologne and the frontier.

[5][14] Another newspaper stated that the wreckage was found near "Elstorfer Borge, Wurtemberg, in the hilly region on the borders of the Swabian Alps, far out of her course, and far beyond her destination ... Memmingen, near where the Jupiter crashed is 250 mi (400 km) southeast and beyond Cologne.

"[35] Lastly, one outlet claimed the "search was made more difficult by the nature of the countryside, which has numerous small pine-woods, deep heather and gorse, and a good deal of marshy ground.

"[35] It is unclear what led to the apparent confusion between Burkheim-Bergheim and Eltsorfer Borge-Elsdorf, other than conflation of similar place names.

"[39] The Telegraph air correspondent noted that the DH.86 biplane was fitted with four Gypsy-Six 200 horsepower engines and had a cruising speed of 155 mph (249 km/h).

[36] One newspaper report stated that "according to a police sergeant who found the wreckage ... at that time it was snowing and a gale was blowing.

"[33] According to the Manchester Guardian, a reporter for the Reuters news service visited the crash site on the afternoon of 16 March.

The occupants must have been killed on the spot.A Daily Telegraph correspondent also personally visited the scene:[36] When I arrived there was nothing to be seen but a large heap of ashes.

[36]The Manchester Guardian also stated that "two carts later today conveyed coffins" to the scene of the disaster, "several miles from Bergheim" "in a hilly wood, about 30 mi (48 km) from [Cologne]," and that "there was no eye-witness of the crash.

[41] An important figure at Imperial Airways, why Wolley-Dod was on a flight owned by the Railway Air Services and flying over Germany remains unknown.