COMET CRASH INQUIRY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27488, 23 October 1954, Page 7

COMET CRASH INQUIRY

Photographs Of Dummies (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, October 21. A court of inquiry was today shown photographs of dummy bodies being blasted from an aeroplane—a reconstruction of what happened when a Comet airliner exploded over the Mediterranean last January. The photographs were taken with a high-speed camera at the Farnborough Government air research centre, where scientists spent three months trying to find the mysterious cause of the disasters which led to the Comet fleet being grounded. Sir Arnold Hall, the Farnborough director, told the court his scientists built an experimental pressure cabin of “perspec.” It was equipped with seats as in the aeroplane and with dummy passengers. The cabin was charged with air at high pressure and this caused the cabin to -burst at the top—in the same way as the scientists believe the Comets burst because of metal fatigue. The first photograph, taken only sixthousands of a second after release of the top, showed no particular disturbance in the cabin. The second, at three-hundredths of a second, showed some of the seats being thrust back, and succeeding pictures showed increasing effects until one photograph at one-tenth of a second showed what Sir Arnold Hall called the “development of complete chaos in the cabin.” Dummy Hits Roof At 0.6 of a second a photograph showed a dummy passenger hitting the roof with considerable violence and seats flying about in all directions. Other pictures showed a dummy hurtling through a hole caused by the blast. “It would be all over in a fraction of a second,” Sir Arnold Hall said. An Italian doctor. Professor Antonion Fornari, told the court that most of the examined victims of the airliner were killed by violent chest and skull injuries. The doctor said that these injuries Were consistent with their being thrown suddenly against the sides and roof of the aeroplane. Professor Fornari told the court, through an interpreter, that, as assistant to the director of forensic medicine at Pisa University, he examined 15 bodies and carried out post-mortems on 14 of the 35 killed in the first Comet crash last January on a flight from Rome to London. Damage to the thorax had occurred generally before death. Some skull fractures occurred before, and some after death. The witness said that both he and Professor Folce Domenici. director of the Pisa Institute, believed the passengers had died very quickly through being violently hurled from their seats, and through almost simultaneous explosive decompression of the atmosphere. None of the bodies recovered later from the sea off Elba bore signs of drowning. None of the injuries could be associated with those resulting from an explosion “such as that caused by a bomb.”