FATAL NOSE-DIVE.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19259, 14 March 1928, Page 9

FATAL NOSE-DIVE.

SEAPLANE CRASHES AT HIGH SPEED. FAMOUS PILOT KILLED. (BT CABLE—PBESS ASSOCIATION— COFTBIGHT.) (AUSTBALIAH AND N.Z. CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, March 12. Captain P. M. Kinkead, one of the most famous highspeed pilots in the Royal Air Force, while on a trial flight prior to attempting to break the world's speed record, crashed in the Solent from a height of 400 feet. The machine was going at a terrific pace, when it nose-dived vertically, like a shell from a gun. When it struck the water a great column spouted up. There was a faint sound from the engine for a second or two, and in less than half a minute the machine and pilot had disappeared without a trace. An Admiralty high-speed boat was on the scene within a minute, but found nothing but swirling water. Captain Kinkead had been waiting at Calshot for a week for an opportunity to wrest the record from _ Italy. The machine was never in the air until Sunday, when its trial was most successful. To-day was the second test. After waiting all the morning while a snowstorm raged, towards afternoon the sky cleared, and conditions became favourable. [Captain Kinkead, who was one of the pilots selected to represent Britain in the recent Schneider Cup race _ at Venice, was trying out a new machine, in which he proposed to attempt to wrest the world's speed record from Italy. The seaplane was a sister ship to the one in which Britain won the Schneider Cup. He was confident he would be able to do more than 300 miles an hour, which was sufficient to break the record.]