BOMBER CRASH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 January 1939, Page 5

BOMBER CRASH

.PLANE FALLS ON HOUSE IN SUSSEX PILOT AND MAID KILLED. WOMAN RESIDENT INJURED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) LONDON, January 17. A Royal Air Force bomber crashed on the top of a house at Crowborough, in Sussex, during a thick fog. The pilot of the plane and a maid working in the house were killed, while a woman resident was injured. The house and plane were set on fire and the ammunition exploded, bullets riddling the pilot. The bodies of the pilot and maid were recovered from the blazing wreckage. An eyewitness stated that the plane, after the engine had cut out, apparently attempted to land on the village green. It at first grazed the roof of the next door house and then crashed into the first floor of the house occupied by, Mrs Smiley, a semi-invalid octogenarian, flinging the roof into the garden and burying itself in the ground floor. Immediate!}’ a sheet of flame burst out and the ammunition exploded like machine-gun fire. Men subdued the fire and dragged out the engine, disclosing the bodies of the pilot and the maid, who had been burned to death.

Mrs Smiley was rescued after the prising up of the ceiling of the room in which she was sitting, pinned by the debris. She was admitted to hospital suffering from shock.

SECOND TRAGEDY

PILOT KILLED AT ALTON. ANOTHER PLANE CRASHES AT DORKING. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 10.20 a.m.) LONDON, January 17. A second tragedy occurred at Alton, in heavy rain, when a Hawker Hurricane single-seater fighter crashed in a field and the pilot was killed. A third crash occurred at Dorking, when a Hurricane fighter struck high tension cables in blinding rain. The pilot was not injured.