SPIN TO DEATH

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1001, 18 June 1930, Page 9

SPIN TO DEATH

INQUEST ON AIRPLANE VICTIMS TE AWAMUTU TRAGEDY From our own Correspondent TE AWAMUTU, Tuesday. Tim inquest concerning the airplane accident, which caused the deaths of Captain Saunders and Mr. A. Minchm on Wednesday, May 21, was held today, before Mr. S. 11. Duckley, coroner. Dr. Blundell said that on hearing \ the crash, he lost no time in reaching j the scene of the accident,. Re exam-1 ined both men and had them cjonveyed j to a private hospital. -Mr. Minchin j died the same evening about seven j o clock, while Captain Saunders ling- ; ered till 10 a.m. next day. An hour before that witness saw him with Dr. Douglas, of Hamilton, in consultation. Death was due to shock following a fracture of the pelvis and rupture of the bladder. Ernest Luks said the machine flew south-west and rose to about I,oooft. The pilot appeared to throttle the engine right back and, pulling the nose of his machine well-up, he did a left-hand stalling turn, which developed into a left-hand spin, which continued until the machine crashed to the ground. He assisted to extricate the passenger from the wreckage. He noticed there was no control column or rudder-bar connection in the front cockpit where the passenger sat. The switches were “on” and the petrol was turned off, probably after the crash, as it would be leaking from the petrol pipe line. Major Cooper, a licensed pilot, said ho was the last person to fly the Gipsy Moth ariplane prior to Captain Saunders flying it to Te-Awamutu. He had flown this machine for approximately 41 hours, and was well versed with the mechanism. He flew the machine on May 13 -to Te Awamutu, Olorohanga, To Kuiti, Arapuni and back to Hamilton. When flying and going into a spin, the machine would drop at the rate of I,oooft per three seconds, and although the altimeter would disclose the height at the time of going into the spin, it would not indicate the correct height on the way down in the spin. From what witness had heard of the fatality it would appear that the accident was due to an error of judgment on the part of Saunders in going into a spin too near the ground and thus leaving himself insufficient height to get the machine out of the spin into normal flight, with the result that it crashed to earth. In ordinary circumstances, I without a passenger, the pilot would probably have recovered control of the l machine, but with the extra weight of I the passenger (Mr. Minchin weighed about 15 stone.) the rate of speed in descent would increase correspondingly. The indications in this case were that Captain Saunders did not allow for the extra weight of the pasj senger. In his opinion a pilot should | allow at least; 600 ft for recovering control of a machine of this type after coming out of a spin. The coroner returned a verdict of “accidental death.”