Obviously that will trigger a large search.
I'm wondering what happened to the two ELT devices he had, one in the plane and one on his person.
My guess is that he was blown into trees which tore apart the plane, and maybe him, and cast the smaller stuff to the wind. It was, after all, a cloth covered airplane. A bit like an eggshell, stronger than the dickens for what it was designed and extremely fragile in applications for which it wasn't.
Arf