WRECKER IN PLANE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 58, 30 October 1931, Page 5

WRECKER IN PLANE

PASSENGER ENDEAVOURS TO DESTROY GREAT AIR LINER. Twelve persons on board a LuftHansa aeroplane bound from Munich to Berlin were placed in dire peril recently by the frenzied conduct of a passenger named Karl Hutte, who eaused an explosion with the intention of committing suicide. A catastrophe was averted by only one or two seconds, owing to the presenee of mind of one of the officials ( of the Luft-Hansa who noticed smoke ] issuing from a door. By the time he | had forced open the door an explosion, j caused by emptying the contents of a bottle, had shaken the aeroplane", I and Hutte's clothes were practically burned off his body. Within another two or three seconds the whole aeroplane would have been on fire. It is alleged that the motive for the man's extraordinary act was to obtain insurance money by fraud. Hutte, an employee in a big South German engineering works, after two abortive attempts at suicide while in custody, made a third attempt by opening his veins, and was sent to hospital, where he lay at death's door. A plain family man of quiet habits, a few weeks ago he was seized with a wild fit of extravagance. He drew out, secretly, all his wife's savings, and spent„them in a few days at Munich. With the remainder he bought a tieket in the aeroplane from Munich to Berlin as far as Nuremburg. He intended to take his own life, and at the same time to wreck the aeroplanp, so as to obtain for his wif e and family the £2506 insurance money for which every air passenger is insured in Germany.