LIGHTNING STRIKES PLANE
-Press Association
By Telegraph—
NELSON, July 1U. A passenger aircraft operated Air Travel (Xew Zealand) Limited, was struck by lightning this morning while flying from Westport to Nelson. Some damage was caused to the fuselage and some radio valves were blown out, affeeting reception, but not the transmitter. The pilot, Mr. P. C. Lewis, was momentarily blinded by the flash whicli was more severe in the cockpit than in the cabin. The aircraft carried a full complement of passengers and wben struck was over the sea off Heaphy River, north of Karamea. Just as the plane cleared the cloud and came into the sunlight, there was a flash with a loud report and acricl f'umes were noticeable coming from the cockpit. Some passengers were not aware of anything uptoward happening and there was . no alarm. On arrival at Nelson it was found that the plane had been struck in the nose and a small area of paint had been lifted. The Jamage to the aircraft was slight and necessary repairs did not unduly delay its return to the Goast this afternoon. Although cases of radio installations in planes being damaged by lightning have been reported, damage of any sort to the fuselage is considered extremely rare, _ ,
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHRONL19460711.2.34
Bibliographic details
Chronicle (Levin), 11 July 1946, Page 5
Word Count
209LIGHTNING STRIKES PLANE Chronicle (Levin), 11 July 1946, Page 5
Using This Item
NZME is the copyright owner for the Chronicle (Levin). You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of NZME. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in