Red Baron Stunt Crash

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31982, 8 May 1969, Page 26

Red Baron Stunt Crash

(N.Z. Press Association) HASTINGS, May 7. As a result of a crash in a Tiger Moth at Bridge Pa while rehearsing for an air pageant, Patrick J. Doherty, aged 28, a commercial pilot, was committed by Justices of the Peace this afternoon for trial in the Supreme Court at Napier.

Doherty was practising a Red Baron stunt when the plane he was flying crashed, and he and a passenger were injured.

lan Glen Stirling McLeod, of Havelock North, who was on crutches, said he had not worked since the accident He held a student pilot’s licence. On the afternoon of September 6 he made two flights with Doherty, as pilot. The purpose of the flights was to test a smoke generator for an air pageant. They were to act, with an-

other plane, the part of Snoopy and the Red Baron. Eventually they were going to get the worst of it and be shot down and go into a power dive. On the second flight they used all the smoke-mak-ing compound. They then flew across the golf course at about 700 feet for what he thought was preparation to land. He had no idea why the pilot might have put the plane into a spin.

Anthony Glowacki, of Wellington, a general aviation inspector, said he had a discussion with Doherty before the flight. He was to enter a dog fight in an air pageant and he was to be the victim. “He asked if he would be permitted to finish the dogfight in a spin.”

Mr Glowacki said: “I told him not to do so because at a low altitude it was a treacherous manoeuvre. I advised him to finish the dogfight in a spiral, trailing smoke down to 1000 ft.

i “From 1000 ft you can reduce throttle and glide down to 500 ft in a straight line and by ■ tfyit time you will disappear, from the view of spectators behind the tall trees on the golf course," Mr Glowacki said -he told Doherty. , In October he visited Doherty in hospital and asked him if he remembered the briefing. He said yes. He also said'he remembered the limitation of 1000 ft.

“I told Doherty I was disappointed he had contravened the condition,” said-the witness. “He said he was ashamed of himself, or something like that “I asked him if the spin was intentional and after a moment of hesitation he said yes.”