AIRLINER’S CRASH

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28160, 26 December 1956, Page 7

AIRLINER’S CRASH

21 Bodies Found By Police

(Rec. 8 p.m.) MILAN, December 24. An Italian police ski pt trol today found the wreckage of an Italian airliner which crashed on Sunday with 21 persons aboard 6000 feet up Mount Giner in Northern Italy. There were no survivors.

The patrol found the bodies of 17 passengers and four crew members —some in the wrecked fuselage and some nearby in the snow. The ski patrol came upon the wreckage shortly after dawn. Radio messages said that they found the airliner, split in half, in a huge snow crevasse on the edge of a glacier.

One wing was torn off by a wall of the crevasse and the tail lay some distance away on the glacier. Wreckage and bodies were strewn about 10 yards around the point of the crash. The plane was on a regular flight from Rome to Milan on Saturday evening.

As it approached Milan, the pilot signalled the airport control tower that ice formation on his wings was threatening to block the controls. He asked for permission to land immediately. Nothing further was heard until nearly an hour later when an attendant at a cable railway high on Mount Giner heard a plane pass low overhead.

Shortly afterwards, there was an explosion, followed by a sheet of flame.

Duke’s Present To Queen

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 24. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Christmas present for the Queen is a silver electric kettle, the “Evening Standard” reported today. He chose it before he went to Australia and it has been made- to his own specifications. The Queen will receive it at Sandringham tomorrow morning. It will go to her new modern kitchen at Windsor. The kettle shows the Duke’s love of ingenious gadgets, the “Evening Standard” said. A warning light on its base shines when the kettle boils. A two-position switch will enable the Queen to bring it to the boil, or allow it to simmer until required. The heating element is contained between the two skins of the kettle so that there is no liming up of the inside.

Communism “A Failure”

(Rec. 8 p.m.) WASHINGTON. Dec. 24. The United States Vice-President (Mr Richard Nixon) said today that as a result of the sacrifices of the Hungarian people, international communism had been dealt “a mortal blow* from which it could not recover.

He made the statement on his return from Austria where he investigated the plight of Hungarian refugees. Mr Nixon added that international communism had been exposed as “a gigantic failure” after 10 years in which the Communists had complete control of Hungary.