Dreadful Dive

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 693, 19 June 1929, Page 9

Dreadful Dive

AIR-LINER FELL LIKE SHOOTING STAR BODIES STILL MISSING British Official Wireless Reed. 11.35 a.m. RUGBY, Wed. The Aip Ministry announces that it has been decided to order a formal investigation into the accident to the air-liner City of Ottawa in the English Channel Yesterday, whereby seven persons lost their lives. The composition of the Court will bo announced at an early date. Officials of the Air Ministry and Imperial Airways today examined the wreckage, which now lies on the beacn at Dungeness. Newspaper correspondents state that it has been established that: (1) The air-liner got into difficulties through the engine-shaft breaking and smashing two holes in the sump. (2) The plane turned upside down in striking the water, so that the emergency set in the roof was submerged, this accounting in some measure for the loss of life. Throughout the night wreckage was searched by the light of electrio torches for the missing bodies of three of the seven victims, but no trace of them was found. The passengers in the Folkestone Hospital are suffering from shock and minor injuries. They are not severely injured, but are allowed to see only relatives. One of the survivors described the speed of the fall as terrible. He said he had little recollection of what had happened after the airplane struck the water except the sudden engulfing of the machine. Then two jersey-clad arms grasped him. That was followed by sounds of shouting and scurrying on board the rescue ship. The liner’s pilot, Brailly, sat in a cottage at Lydd all the evening in a distraught state after having laboured all day long. He refused to rest in spite of the pleadings of the women in the cottage. LIKE SHOOTING STAR Eventually Brailly was taken *o Lympne by officials of Imperial Airways, Ltd. He could only say: “It was too terrible to describe. I tried to make the coast. I can say no more.” Members of the trawler’s crew said that, when they cut through one side of the cabin of the airplane with their axes they saw the living among the dead. They worked a long time and rescued all they could. The machine settled down in the sea and the rescuers could not carry on. The airplane had fallen like a shooting star. A survivor, Mr. H. Catham, said it was the most awful experience of his life. The machine struck the water with a terrific crash and men and women were mixed on the floor of the cabin in a struggling mass with heavy luggage on top of them, which held them all down. Mr. Alan Fleming, one of the victims, was a member of Dalgety’s Sydney staff and a resident of Cremorne. Mrs. Ickerson was his mother. An inquest on the disaster will be opened on Wednesday. A Press Association cablegram from Sydney says Mrs. Ickerson, one of the victims of the disaster, resided at Mosman, Sydney. A few years ago she and other members of her family were involved in a serious motor accident at Kellyville, outside Sydney. She spent some months in hospital. Miss Marjorie Smith, of Melbourne, was booked to return by the Orama to Australia in August.