Glider Pilot Killed

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30740, 3 May 1965, Page 1

Glider Pilot Killed

(New Zealand Press Association) BLENHEIM, May 2. A glider pilot was killed when he crashed a short distance from the southern perimeter of Omaka aerodrome, near Blenheim, this morning.

He was Donald Proctor, of 11 Brian Bary street, Blenheim. He suffered multiple injuries.

Mr Proctor, a member of the signals staff of the Railways Department, was aged 43, married with four children, two of whom are still at school.

Mr Proctor was piloting the Marlborough Gliding and Soaring Club’s Slingsby Skylark single-seater sailplane. Observers say the aircraft broke up in the air about 200 ft or 300 ft.

The fuselage plummeted to the ground and disintegrated. Wreckage fell over a wide area.

The sailplane had been towed by the Marlborough Aero Club’s Tiger Moth, which is used almost exclusively for this work, and it is thought it was coming in to land when the accident happened. The report was loud and as the aircraft began to break up attracted the attention of people in a hangar on the opposite side of the airfield.

When they rushed out pieces of the aircraft were fluttering to the ground. Only a few weeks ago, piloting his club’s other glider, a Kookaburra dual-seater, Mr Proctor made a five-hour endurance flight for part of an international gliding award. The Inspector of Accidents for the Civil Aviation Department, Wing Commander O. J. O’Brien, arrived at Omaka this afternoon to open an inquiry.