NOT UNEXPECTED.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18479, 5 September 1925, Page 13

NOT UNEXPECTED.

DANGEROUS LOCAL STORMS FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AUSTRALIAN AND N.2. CAB LI ASSOCIATIOW.) NEW YORK, September 3. Air Curtis Wilbur, Secretary of the Navy, speaking at Washington, said the crash was not unexpected, as he had declared the Navy always feared the effects on airships of the destructive local storms sometimes prevalent in the interior States, and for this reason explicit orders were never issued to make flights, wliich were left to the discretion of the commanders. This was the case with the Shenandoah. Hear-Admiral Moffat, Chief of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, Said this disaster should not be allowed to divert the Navy from the determination to continue the advancement of American aeronautics. "Such accidents," lie said, "are bound to happen, as we try to find a permanent place in the sky. The men who died gave their lives for the advancement of science and the furtherance of the nation's air supremacy.*' Navy Department Report. The Shenandoah was struck by lightning, according to advice to the Navy . Department. . Messages from Belle Vallev state that the airship struck the line of tho squall shortly. affxTr five o'clock at a height of 3000 feet. She broke in three parts. There was no explosion. After encountering the storm the ship went up to 5000 fee?, then suddenly broke, two pieces falling within 50 feet of each other, the third drifting through the air 12 miles. SURVIVOR'S STORY. "DROPPED LIKE LEAD." TERRIFIC NOISE OF STORM. (SYDNET "SUK" SEBVIC*.) (Received September sth, 12.5 a.m.) NEW YORK, September 3, Lieutenant-Commander Banking, a survivor of the Shenandoah, says: "I. had just gone on watch. The ship was making no headway, and we had already been blown ninety miles out of our course when the cyclone hit us, and -shot us up another four hundred feet. There "were two violent plunges, and amid the crash of lightning and thunder, and a noise of rending steel, such as you could never imagine, she broke in the middle. The forward end shot into the air like an aeroplane, soaring from the earth. The struts of the control cabin snapped, and the cabin dropped like a hunk of lead." Colonel Hall, the Army observer aboard the--Shenandoah, say 3 that the disaster was in no way attributable to a defect in the ship. Meteorological advices would have saved them. When ZR2 was burned at Hull five years ago, Commander Littel was killed. His widow emigrated, to America, and married Lewis Hancock, who was killed aboard the Shenandoah. FOURTEEN DEAD. Tssuna's txugkaKs.) (Received September 4th, 8.5 p.m.) NEW YORK, September 4. A Belle Valley message states that the number of the Shenandoah's crew dead totals fourteen. The vessel was not struck by lightning, but was wrecked by the And. N.Z. INVENTOR. WORKING ON AIRSHIP. (special to "the pbess.") GISBOENE, September 4. Mr Humphrey Parker, a Gisborne boy, has been engaged during the past two years on the Shenandoah in perfecting his invention for providing water ballast to compensate the weight of the petrol fuel consumed. Mr Parker had mdde many flights on the Shenandoah, and at last advice, received about a fortnight ago, he was at Lakehurst, New Jersey, waiting the installation of new apparatus which he had designed. He made only occasional trips in the vessel when the apparatus was to be tested, and the probability is that he was not engaged in the cruise now reported to have ended disastrously.