PAPANUI AIR TRAGEDY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 112, 13 May 1926, Page 10

PAPANUI AIR TRAGEDY.

LIEUT. TURNER'S EVIDENCE.

MACHINE DIVES AFTER SPIN.

CORONER SAYS AN ACCIDENT.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, this day

At the coroner's inquiry yesterday into the deaths of Captain F. J. Horrell and Mr. T. L. Reid, who were killed in the aeroplane crash at Papanui on March 17. the principal evidence wa9 that of Lieutenant P. A. Turner, the third occupant of the machine.

In the course of his evidence, Lieut. Turner said that during the flight Captain Horrell sat in the pilot's cockpit, white Reid was seated with witness in the rear. Reid had asked to go up. They looped the loop over Papanui, all agreeing to do so. It was an ordinary loop. Horrell appeared to be his usual self. They came out of a second loop all right and then went into a spin. Going downward after spinning the tail began to move in an unusual manner, and then the machine dived straight to the ground. He did not know at what height they were flying just before.

Continuing, Lieut. Turner said that the height was safe for that machine to do a loop in. He saw the altimeter at 2000 feet, but could not say if it went down lower. Before they struck the ground, Horrell switched the engine on, his idea being to try and get out of the spin and to recover control. The engine had been shut off as they came, out of the second loop.

The coroner: Had Horrell got too low?

Witness: I cannot pass an opinion on that. Witness said that Captain Horrell switched off his engine just before hitting and the nose lifted. Witness was hazy about the rest although he remembered lying over Reid and seeing petrol flowing freely. He had been very ill and was just recovering.

Captain L. M. Isitt, officer in charge of the Wigram aerodome, said that Captain Horrell was an experienced pilot at the war and he was successful as an instructor. He was an instructor at the time of the flight. He was a strictly sober man. Captain Horrell used the same machine on the morning of the tragedy and had flown in it several times. He was medically fit. The witness flew the machine himself at' 4 p.m. on March 17, and everything was in perfect running order. He did not loop the loop. In witness' opinion, it was the spin that caused the crash, but whether it was voluntary or involuntary he could not say. In a spin, the acceleration had been known to cause giddiness in pilots, and when an accident occurred under such circumstances no blame was attributed to them.

In his finding, the coroner said that the only point was as to what caused the machine to come down. It appeared that it came down as the result of a spin. It had been pointed out that sometimes pilots became giddy in a spin, but Captain Horrell, if giddy, seemed to have recovered himself to a certain extent, but too late to recover the safe flight of the machine. It was an accident and no blame attached to Captain Horrell as pilot.

The departmental inquiry into the accident will be held on Friday.