CRASH OF TUDOR AIRLINER

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25272, 26 August 1947, Page 7

CRASH OF TUDOR AIRLINER

EFFECT ON FUTURE OF -TYPE

“SET-BACK TO BRITISH AVIATION ”

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7 pjn.) LONDON, August 25. “Further delays in getting Britain’s ill-fated Tudor airliners into service may result from the crash of the prototype at Woodford,’’ says the aviation correspondent of the “Daily MaiL” “Delay will be caused more by the deaths of the designer, Mr Roy Chadwick, and the chief test pilot, Mr Sydney Thorn, than by the actual destruction of the aeroplane. “Important modifications to the

Tudors to meet criticism by the British Overseas Airways Corporation, had reached an advanced stage. The whole future of this type of aircraft depends on the results of improvements on which a picked Avro team, including Mr Chadwick and Mr Thorn, had been working. Their deaths and the loss of the prototype Tudor are one of the biggest set-backs British aviation has ever experienced. Britain was relying on the Tudor to reestablish the prestige of her aircraft industry in the production of long-range airliners.”

An Avro official said that the Tudor dropped a wing as it was taking off. A wing-tip touched the ground and then hit some bushes which tore off the starboard aileron. The Air Ministry is carrying out immediately a full investigation into the cause of the crash.

The Avro Company, in a statement, said that the test flight was for the purpose of observing the behaviour of certain special instruments and equipment with which the aircraft had been fitted as an aid to research. The aeroplane had been operating continuously for the last 17 months on intensive development flights to perfect the pressurisation, heat, and ventilating systems. Fortunately for the progress of the investigations there is another prototype, while several of the production machines are reaching the flying stage.