EIGHT DEAD IN AIR-LINER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 692, 18 June 1929, Page 9

EIGHT DEAD IN AIR-LINER

FORCED DOWN IN THE CHANNEL TWO BOATS RACE TO AVERT TRAGEDY IMPERIAL AIRWAYS’ FINE RECORD SPOILED (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (United Service) Received 11 a.m. LONDON, Monday. EIGHT persons are dead as a result of a disaster to an air-liner —the first in the history of Imperial Airways. The tragedy occurred when the liner came down in the English Channel.

The City of Ottawa, going to Paris from Croydon, had just cleared the coast when trouble occurred. The pilot wirelessed, “Trying to land,” then “Cannot make it,” then “Going down.” The liner fluttered impotently down to the glassy sea. A pilotship raced three miles and rescued five persons. Pilot Brailly, despite an injury, directed vain efforts to get the other eight imprisoned passengers out, but this will not be possible till the air-liner is beached at Folkestone tonight. The City .of Ottawa, almost a new machine, weighed three and a-half tons. She carried 11 passengers. She was forced down in the Channel three miles from Dungeness. The latest reports state that eight are dead. Earlier messages stated that a trawler rescued the passengers and crew, but it appears that a lot was taken for granted.

Watchers ashore by means of glasses surmised that the trawler and pilot ship had rescued the lot. Instead, it was found that the forepart of the machine was submerged. They managed to rescue a mechanic and four passengers. An hour elapsed before Mrs. Fleming, of Sydney, was brought out dead. Tugs and trawlers are trying to tow the air-liner inshore in the hope of saving those missing. Mrs. Fleming’s daughter is dead; but Miss Marjorie Smith of Melbourne, was saved. Her father was also aboard. A British Official Wireless message says three of the dead passengers in the wrecked air-liner are women, and three of the rescued passengers are women. Dungeness is a headland with a ity of Kent, and projecting into the lighthouse, forming the south extremEnglish Channel 10 miles east-south-east of Rye. KILLED OR DROWNED PASSENGERS BEYOND HUMAN AID FRANTIC RESCUE EFFORTS (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 12.5 p.m. LONDON, Monday. The Imperial Airways’ wonderful record was rudely shattered today, when the City of Ottawa nose-dived in the Channel. She is a twin-engined Handley-Page, and bad 13 persons aboard when she left Croydon at 10.30 for Zurich. She sent out an S.O.S. 15 miles across the Channel. The pilot im-

mediately turned back, but three miles from Folkestone the plane wirelessed that she was landing in the sea alongside the trawler, which was first on the scene.

The plane sent up a huge column of water, somersaulting and smashing the wings, and immediately beginning to sink. The trawler got grappling irons under the plane, and cleverly kept part of the machine above the waterline, while the crew used axes against the outside walls of the cabin, and thus reached the imprisoned passengers. These were thrown in a heap when the plane dived. Some were already beyond human aid owing to injuries or to their being drowned in the inrush of water; but four passengers and a mechanic were taken off. Efforts at rescue continued an hour before the body of a woman was extricated from the cabin. An attempt was then made to tow the plane ashore. When the pilot cutter came in sight of the shore, it signalled for an ambulance. The injured, including two women, were placed in a rowing boat and taken ashore to hospital. The body of Mrs. Ickerson, a relative of the Flemings, was also taken ashore covered with a Union Jack. Four bodies are still in the City of Ottawa. GREAT RECORD WRECKED The tragedy spoils a fine record. The Director of Civil Aviation, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Sefton Brancker, speaking at the Croydon Airdrome or May 24, revealed that the Imperial Airways’ only passenger casualty during the past five years had been a dog which was washed out of the hold of a machine when it came down in the Channel. No other passenger had even been scratched. The only other serious mishap the imperial Airways have had occurred on July 13 last year, when two typists in the Airways office were being given a joyride at Croydon. The machine they were in, a small single-engined baggage plane, crashed in flames and the girls and two men of the Airways staff were killed. Hundreds of people ran to extricate the occupants of the plane when it crashed, but they were tragically helpless. They could not go within. 10 yards of the inferno. On August 25 it will be 3 0 years since the first airplane service was established between London and Paris. Tiny airplanes carrying only two people represented the flying service during the period of that pioneer airway.

During its early days it transported only about 20 people a. week between the two capitals; today the great nineton passenger planes of the Imperial Airways provide accommodation for 20 travellers each, and during a busy week it is no uncommon thing for 2,000 people to use the airway.