MISSING AIR LINER FOUND WRECKED IN N.S.W. RANGES

Grey River Argus, 6 September 1948, Page 5

MISSING AIR LINER FOUND WRECKED IN N.S.W. RANGES

All 13 Aboard Believed Dead (Rec. 10.5). SYDNEY, September 5. The missing air liner proves to have been wrecked inland, and not at sea as earlier thought. Burned-out wreckage of a plane was sighted yesterday by a transport plane has been positively identified as that of the missing Australian National Airways airliner Lutana. A man who reached , the wreckage on foot reports finding a heap of badly burned bodies in the nose of. the plane. It is considered unlikely that there were any survivors. Captain J. C. Faterson, pilot of the East West Airlines plane, sighted the wreckage while on a scheduled flight from Tamworth to Sydney. He gave the position as being high on the slope of Ben Evers, 4500 feet, and 16 miles west of the town of Quirindi. Air Force nlanes subsequently switched to this area and confirmed that the wreckage was that of the missing aircraft, which had apparently flown into the mountain at 150 miles an hour. Six search parties were immediately dispatched from Wallabadah and Nundle. Fred Gotland, who returned to the base early to-day, reported that some members .of his group had reached the wreck, and that 18 men, including a doctor, who had not yet arrived, would remain there all night. He said the plane was completely burned out, except for the tailpiece, and a torn-off wing, and that all of the bodies, of which he thought there were 13, were jammed in the nose. The machine had cut a swathe through heavy timber less than 100 yards from the mountain top. The doctor- will count the bodies before a search for possible * survivors is abandoned. Pilots say that Ben Evers is not indicated on air maps as a “spot height”, although the omission has frequently been reported. The other ten men in the Superfortress survived, all having baled out.

R.A.F. Bomber Crash Kills Seven (Rec. 8.30). LONDON, Sept. 5. The crew of seven were killed when a R.A.F. Lancaster bomber crashed in flames on .Tonte Cristo Island, between Italy and Corsica. In another crash, a member ot a Superfortress crew who baled out at the mouth of the River Scheldt, died in hospital;