Experienced Pilots Give Opinions

Chronicle (Levin), 21 March 1949, Page 6

Experienced Pilots Give Opinions

Hopelessly crippled when the port wing crashed into a .60 feet high rimu tree, about 20 feet from the top, the ill-starred National Airways Corporation Lodestar airliner, Kereru, with a crew of two and 13 passengers aboard, slewed sharply to the right toward the mountain side, mowed level the tops of smaller trees in its path, and probably capsized in the air before it struck into the hillside with terrific impact which caused the whole aircraft structure to disintegrate. This reconstruction of "the last few seconds of the flight of the Kereru is possible from the tragic evidence seen by members of the first land recovery party to reach the scene of the wreckage at 7.55 a.m. on Saturday after a fast and gruelling trip from the base camp at the homestead of Mr. and Mrs. K. D. Jones' on whose property the aircraft had crashed. .

Immediately on impact with the hillside the whole of the wreckage must have been raked from stem to stern by fire, and it is probable that there were some explosions because portions of the plane's equipment and the personal property of the passengers were found hanging on limbs of trees 40 and 50' feet high. The bodies of both members of .the crew had been tossed with terrific force from the cockpit to-.- land nearly 100 yards away from' the wreckage with surprisingly little mutilation, but the 13 passengers were incinerated in the cabin by the fire which had generated such immense heat that much of the metal portions of the aircraft structure had been melted into shapeless heaps. From the time base camp was established at the Jones' homestead Mr. and Mrs. Jones kept open house for those taking part in the recovery work, their generosity and hospitality received unstinting praise from the men of the recovery parties. According to some experienced pilots, the pilot of the Kereru at the time of the aecident would be making a landward sweep preparatory to landing. it is the custorn on the southward approaeh to Paraparaumu airport to cali up the Paraparaumu control tower from the mouth of the Foxton River and ask for laudiug instructions. If conditions are f avourable it is usual for aircraft 'at the Otaki River mouth to'begin a seaward sweep out over Kapiti Island on: the approach to the airport, but if conditions of turbulence are reported over Kapiti, the aircraft would make a landward sweep more or less along the line foiiowed by the Kereru. The Kereru pilot had asked Paraparaumu \control for permission to proceed uuder visual flight rules which meaus chat the crew are'able to make ground observations from the air. Kereru was cleared to proceed visually but the Lodestar must have encountered dense cloud over the mountain rjdges. VA noiable point in observations of the wreckage was the fact that the 'retractable landing gear was down as for landing. By a strange twist of co-incidence the Kereru failed to clear the wood'ed ridge by about the saine distance as the 'illfated Kaka which crashed on a 'shoulder of Mount Ruap'ehu on August 9 last year when 11 passengers aiid the crew of two Were killed. ' • ' :- Som6 experienced airmen gave the opinion that if the pilot of the Kereru had seen the rimu which the plane first struck, and had been able to avoid it he still would- have had a chance ot' clearing the ridge. On the other h'and if the pilot was decreasing speed preparatory to landing, it is unlikely that, he would have been able tJ lift' the plane sufficiently to clear the reni'ai'ning 200 feet of mountainside. Stark testimony of how the Kereru had first met disaster by striking the rimu tree was provided by the warped and twisted metal of the port wing iutbedded in the trunk of the tree about •10 feet from ground level. A few, feet higher up more metal was inextricably i twisted through a fork in the trunk. A slightly 'Smaller and thinner boled tree a short dista-B.ee from the rimu also' took part of the IB.ital impact, as was to be seen from a ldfge splinter of jagged metal jutting oilt from the trunk. From the rimu to the hillside on the level at which the aircraft crd.shed to earth, a large number of smaller trees had been sheared off level. At the point of impact with the hill, two large trees had been unrooted and the port motor, sheared clean away from. tlie remainder of the aircraft frame, was inibedded in the earth. Portions of the wreckage were scattered over an are>i of approximately quarter of a mile.