PLANE COMES DOWN ON SPORTS GROUND

Taupo Times, Volume IV, Issue 194, 14 October 1955, Page 1

PLANE COMES DOWN ON SPORTS GROUND

Considerable excitement was caused in the town on Priday evening, September 30, about quarter to seven, when a Tiger Moth plane, after it had circled the business area, cut its engine and swooped down low over the recently forined Sports Ground fronting Tongariro Street. Following this the pilot switched his engine on again and gained Leight, but it was by then obvious that he was preparing to make a landing on the Ground in the gathering dark. As the plane made two more circuits of the Ground a crowd quicklv gathered, among them a local garage proprietor wTho, realising the possible dangers of a forced landing, was equipped with two foam fire extinguishers. On the third circuit the pilot came in fr^rn the northern end of the Ground, made a good landing, and swung round toward the west to avoid the War Memorial Hall, coming to a stop halfway between the Hall and the Police Station and some five yards from the southern wire fence.

The pilot, Mr Donald Eric Morgan, of Palmerston North, left Mangere, Auckland, for Wanganui, about 4 p.m., but had encountered mist. and got off course, and later decided to stop at Taupo. He did not know the district and in the gathering dark did not locate the Tauhara Aerodrome. About 6 p.m. he had landed his plane on a Lands Department aerial top-dressing flying-strip on the Oruanui Block, near Mr R. K. Young' s farm, later took otf again and came dowu on the Sports Ground, which he had observed from the air earlier. Mr Derek Dalcomb, chief instructor of the Wanganui Aero Club, owners of the plane, arrived in Taupo by car on Saturday, and aided by a fresh northerly wind was able to fly the machine from the Ground. Starting from behind the Memorial Hall, and heading toward the Spa RoadTongariro .Street junction, the machine was air-borne after a ruri of a few yards. The general interest in the recent sowing of the new Sports Ground in grass was rather amusingly evidenced )y the fact that, once enquirers had ..(mnd that the pilot had been unhurt in landing, they invariably asked whether any damage had been done to the field, hastening to add that of course the pilot's safety was the main consideration. In fact, no material damage to the grass oi* surface was caused by this unscheduled first landing of a plane in the town itself.