AEROPLANE CRASHES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 138, 11 May 1940, Page 6

AEROPLANE CRASHES.

SEQUEL TO LOST PROPELLER. PILOT SERIOUSLY HURT. Per Press Association. NEW 7 PLYMOUTH, May 10. W r henthe propeller fell off in midair, a Royal New Zealand Air Force Tiger Motli machine from. No. 2 Elementary Training School at Belt Block, crashed into a gully on a farm on the outskirts of New, Plymouth, yesterday afternoon, and Leading-Air-craftsman Dean F. Bullen, aged 2,6 years,. tlie sole occupant; liad his spine fractured. Spectators saw the ’plane bank and. turn several times, the engine seeming to function properly and the pilot apparently having control. After the last turn-at a height of 700 ft. the machine went into a dive. about 200 ft. of the ground the machine flattened out =. and the ...engine began to splutter before, stopping. .The machine, wliich had been flown for only tell days, landed at an angle oil a lullside, the engine digging a short shallow, trench and being forced back partly into the observer’s cockpit'by the impact. The engine was damaged and all four wings badly broken, and it is considered the aeroplane will be written off as a loss. Parts of the propeller landed threequarters of a mile from the crash. Though the landing wheels were broken from the machine when they touched the ground, the pilot, according to observers, made a splendid landing on an even keel after his final dive. The nilot was conscious and able to talk when' found. He said something about a “b'ack out” in the middle of a slow roll. The propeller fell off. lie explained, and he made the best landing he could on one wing.