LIGHT PLANE CRASHES

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26264, 8 November 1950, Page 6

LIGHT PLANE CRASHES

ACCIDENT DURING TOPDRESSING

PILOT NOT SERIOUSLY INJURED

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 7. The pilot of a Tiger Moth aircraft used for topdressing escaped with concussion and superncial injuries when his aeroplane crashed on a farm at Kohekohe. 46 miles from Auckland, this afternoon. He is Mr John Thompson Barr, aged 26, single, of Mission Bay. The machine was wrecked. Less than a month ago Mr Barr made a forced landing at night at Te Puke with the same aircraft or) a flight from Wanganui to Auckland. On that occasion he was uninjured and the aeroplane was undamaged. Mr Barr and his brother, Mr G. F. Barr, who work as a company, had been engaged to topdress several farms near Kohekohe. and were using a small paddock on the property of Mr R. Reynolds as a landing strip.' The paddock ends in a sudden and steep drop into a scrub-lined valley several hundred feet deep.

Mr Barr had flown from Mangere Airfield On Monday and made a number of successful trial take-offs and landings, leaving the aircraft grounded for the night. About 3 o’clock this afternoon he decided that air conditions were suitable, and told Mr' Reynolds and a number of other farmers gathered to watch the flight that he would make his last trial run. Coming in to land the aeroplane appeared to overshoot the landing strip, which is marked with flags. One Wing struck a flagpole, and the impact swung the machine over the brow of the hill. Skimming the ground, it fell down the abrupt slope, clearing a fence on the way. About 100 feet down it dropped over a bank on to a grassed ledge. As the nose burrowed into the turf the propeller was splintered, and the aircraft turned over and crashed further down the slope into 'the scrub. The port wings were torn off, the starboard wings crumpled, the fuselage ripped open, and the tail twisted. The aeronlane landed vertically, with its nose in the air, and Mr Barr was trapped in the cockpit. When helpers rushed to the scene he was still conscious but dazed. They freed him from the wreckage. He is in the Middlemore Hospital, where his condition is not serious.

(New Zealand Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH. November 7. Mr H. M. Heron, a Railway Department . employee who received head injuries in a fall at Taumarunui yesterday, died in the Taumarunui Public Hospital to-day. He was a married man with one child and had lived at taumarunui for about two years, having been previously stationed at Otahuhu.

He was found with* severe head injuries at the foot of Sunshine Hill road, and it was thought that he was going down a side track when he fell down a bank on to the road.

MOTOR-CYCLIST INJURED

John Brydon Dennis, of 31 Severn street, suffered abrasions to an ankle when the motor-cycle he was riding was involved in a collision with a motor-car at the corner of New Regent and Armagh streets about 6.35 p.m: yesterday. He was treated at the Christchurch Public Hospital as an outpatient