LODESTAR INQUIRY

Chronicle (Levin), 20 May 1949, Page 5

LODESTAR INQUIRY

' Press Association )

• ^ — - Wisdom 01 Usiog Wartime Pilots Questioned

(Per

WELLINGTON, May 20. The board was confronted with an extraordinary mystery and unless the pilot were to be accused oi suieide and multiple murder, any explanation except the pilot's deiiberate negllgence might aecount for the disaster, said Mr. R. Hardie-Boys, counsel for the next-of-kin of the iate Commander Bartley, when the inquiry into the Kereru crash on March 18 resumea today. • Tne board consists of Judge Stilwell, Group Oapiam W. U. fchieei, and Mr. R. A. Kirkup. CounselC submissions are being heard and the inquiry will end loday. Pirst to address the board was Mr. C. A. L. Treadwell, for the Internal Affairs Departmeno and un reiatives of two of the passengers who lost their lives. He said tht only prudent eourse available tc Commander Bartley was to have made a starboard course over the sea from his last reporting point. Over-familiarity. The inevitable conc.usion wa. that Commander Bartley, who had approached Paraparaumu aerodrome from the north, took tht course he did, nokin ignorance, but perhaps with the familiarity tha. bred contempt. Commander Bartley alone was responsible for the course he followed in his approacl. to the aerodrome and it w'as an unjustifiable course. Any deviation a pilot from maximum care waf negligence. The board might con sider whether pilots who had performed deeds of daring and bravery in wartime combat were the best suited to the necessarily humdrum routine of civil flying in peacetime To turn towards cloud-covered hills as Commander Bartley did, was a hazardous step of grossest negligence, involving disastrous conssquences. The commander of the aircraft took a risk which prudence shoulc have forbidden. Ghoulish Looting. Supporting submissions of the pilot's negligence were made by Mr. W. E. Leicester, appearing for tht reiatives of another passenger. Mr Leicester said he also wished to refer to the matter raised earliei in the inquiry about safeguardine passengers' effects after a crash rnis matter was unlikely to have been raised had not Mr. Cunningham, in his opening address, suggested legislation to prevent a pos.UDle recurrence of looting and piliage in the event of another air crash. The board should consider whether persons who had been branded as pillagers, looters and ghouls, might not have been under the impression that the passengers luggage and other articles had b?en.

abandoned by the police after the bodies were reecvered. Mr. Leicester said the evidence had shown that after the esrne:, Kaka crash on Mount Ruaoehu ihe police guarded most jealously their control of the wreckage ancthe area in which it lay, resencint any intervention by either civil or military authorities. At the scene of the Kereru crash, into which the board wa-s now inquiring, thert were nine members of the Police Force present for three and a half hours and it was improper tha. after that the passengers property was left unguarded for two days with inevitable result that manj persons visited the scene and removed the artic7es. The police sergeant had said tha what was left behind when tht police party left the wreckage was valueless, but that was not for hiir to have_ decided and the .sergeant's own evidence had inconsistently stated that the goods, which were later recovered from varior.s people were of value. With the large number of men available, .the police should have been able to arrange some control. "I ask the board tc hesitate to brand a large number of people as they have been branded during this inquiry without considering whether they may no have been led to believe that those things had been abandoned by the police as valueless." Civil Aviation Today. Mr. R. E. Tripe, another counse1 for the next-of-kin of the passengers, said that civil aviation in New Zealand was stPl in a state of flux. "Like Mahommet's coffin it is half wTay between heaven and earth." he declared. The earliest possible clarification and improvement of control was most desirable. Mr. R. Ha,rdie-Boys said he dic not seek to dispute the responsibility that had rested on Commande?

Bartley who was clearly in charge of the aircraft immediate'.y before the disaster. Undoubtedly the plane ait the time of; the crash was in clouc? which embraced the land features of a height greater than the plane's altitude, but it did not necessarily follow that it was the pilot's fault the plane was in that situation, as Mr. Cunningmm and other counse had assumed from the outset. The inquiry is proceeding.