’PLANE NOW FOUND

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 310, 16 December 1936, Page 5

’PLANE NOW FOUND

Pilot Appears To Be Trapped In Cockpit. Press Association —Copyright. Melbourne, December 15. Searching planes to-day located the missing plane of Pilot-Officer Eric Rad, an Air Force weather pilot whose duty it was .to ascend to 20,000 feet daily in a single-seater Bulldog Fighter to make meteorological observations and who went up as usual at 8.15 yesterday morning .without returning. The machine crashed in bush on Mount Wallace about 50 miles from Melbourne in the direction of Ballarat. Pilot-Officer Read appeared to be trapped in the cockpit and was seen waving to the searchers. A land party expects ’to reach him to-night. A later message says that Read also suffered a broken jaw and a severely crushed left hand. Except for the first twenty minutes after the crash he was conscious the whole time. While the rescuers were using a hacksaw to get him out of the cockpit he told how he became lost in impenetrable fog and rain and circled a long time seeking a landing, finally crashing in the trees while travelling at about one' hundred miles an hour.