'PLANE CRASH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 10

'PLANE CRASH.

FIVE MEN KILLED.

CAUSE A MYSTERY.

EARLY MORjNING TRAGEDY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 21. Air experts are unlikely ( to discover the cause of the crash of an Anson bomber at Richmond early on Monday morning, which resulted in the instant deaths of Flight-Lieut. Arthur Moorehouse Watkins (25), of Sydney; FlightLieut. Hugh Vaughan Horner (27), of Sydney; Flying-Officer Henry Parker, of Tasmania; Flying-Officer Malcolm Musgrave Mclnnes, of Mefcourne; LeadingAircraftsman Leonard John King (25), of Brisbane. Two bombers, each carrying five men, arrived in Sydney last Friday night from Melbourne. Of the crews of five, four in each case were officers undergoing an observation course, which wa« why they were all in the two machines. On Saturday they all attended the wedding in Sydney of Flying-Officer Law, who had returned from an advanced course with the R.A.F., and had previously been stationed at Point Cook, Victoria. On the return trip to Point Cook the two bombers were leaving Richmond on Monday. The first took off at 1.15 a.m. It was seen to circle and then its navigation lights disappeared in a cloud-bank. The second bomber had just taken off when a terrific crash was heard. R.A.A.F. ambulance and fire crews had nothing to guide them to the scene in the darkness, but a rough idea of the direction from which the terrible noise of the crash had come, and it took them almost half an hour to locate the wreckage. They found the wreck a mile from the aerodrome on the Richmond golf course. The bomber had ploughed up 100 yards of the links, crashed through a fence and skidded Into a ditch. One engine had been torn off and parts of it were found over a #ulius of 100 yards. Four bodies had been flung out of the machine and the fifth was recovered from the wreckage. All five men had ibeen killed instantly. Crashed at Full Speed. Examination of the wreckage at dawn showed that the bomber had crashed with both engines at full throttle. This led R.A.A.F. men to believe that the pilot had los-t his sens* of direction, while flying blind through the cloud-'bank, and had believed that he was still climbing when actually the machine was diving towards the artli at terrific sjteed. They pointed out that pilots had been known to fly a machine banked at 45 degrees while in a cloud, imagining that they were flying on an even keel. Miss Judith Allen, daughter of the managing-director of the well-known retailers, Grace Bros., resigned her job at 2GB only last Friday to marry FlightLieut. Watkins in March, and a staff presentation had been made to her by the managing-director of the station, Mr. H. G. Horner, who was the father of Flight-Lieut. Horner. He said his son had felt assured that nothing would ever happen to him in an aeroplane. The son had a fine record of service. He entered the R.A.F. soon after he left Sydney Grammar School in 1932, and served three years in England and three in India. He returned to Australia early this year, and after six months as senior pilot with Ansett Airways, transferred to Qantas. He resigned from the Qantas service on the outbreak of war to join up again. Flight-Lieut. Watkins had been in charge of the I instructional course at Point Cook.