THE AIR DISASTER.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1921, Page 3

THE AIR DISASTER.

[TABLE NEWS,

AUSTRALIAN AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION SEARCH FOR DEAD, t LONDON, August 26. A search for the dead at Hull was continued all day long by tugs and launches furnished with huge sweeps. No further bodies have Been discovered. The task of the searchers is hampered by high tides. Bathetic figures among the crowd watching the searchers were the English widows of the American airmen, one carrying a six week’s old baby. The girl refuses to believe her husband is dead. SURVIVOR’S STORY. LONDON, Aug. 25.’ Mr Bateman, the R. 38 survivor, interviewed, said that a quarter of an hour before the accident, the airship was tested at full speed. Everything someicl all right. He said: “I was then told to take observations in connection with a special control test. Major Pritchard said that the cintrols were going to be moved fairly rapidly, in order to demonstrate the air-worthiness of the ship to cross the Atlantic. When , the disaster occurred, my feelings were , that the- ship was shaken three or four times laterally, and a few time?- longitudinally. When explosions followed T knew that we were doomed. I was thrown into the cockpit, but a parachute was handy. There was one for each man. T jumped out from the ship’s side, hut the parachute rope became caught in the wires. I hung in mid-air from the parachute while the airship dropped. Tn that position, T ■ fell with the tail to the water. The fall dazed me. When 1 recovered consciousness, 1 found myself on the sandbank with Potter, who was with me in the cockpit and Walker, who was in one of the fins. ITBTHER DETAILS. LONDON. August 25. At 1 American member of the crew of R. 38 who was not aboard, states that on her previous trip one girder broke, and others buckled at practically the same spot where the fatal break occurred. Riverera-ft searched fruitlessly the Humber all-night for possible survivors or bodies. The pilots of the Humber Conservancy Board heroically took tugs through masses of blazing] wreckage while conducting ffio search. Tho authorities report that the remains of the airship are not saleable being choked with mud deposited by tho tides.

FRENCH SYMPATHY. PARTS, August 'Dhc French Covernment hnve tendered sympathy nn the Ios« of R. 38. MR MASSEY’S COMMENT. I!KUTKII’s TE L EGItAMS. 'Received This Dev at O.TO a.in.") LONDON. Au k 25. Mr Massey interviewed at Euston station deeply deplored the airship disaster, which was a tenable blow and would throw the development of commercial airships back many years. “We wanted to prove by the trans-Atlantie (light of R. 38 that the idea was practicable. We have now got to face things as they are and it means a large setback, but I am convinced airships in the future will prove a sound commercial proposition.”