PLANE PLOUGHS INTO FLATS

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 13

PLANE PLOUGHS INTO FLATS

(N.Z.P^A.-Reuter —Copyright) LOS ANGELES, May 11.

Six persons are dead and one woman is listed as missing after a converted Mitchell bomber of the type used early in the Second World War crashed into two blocks of flats in Los Angeles.

The four members of the crew of the aircraft, which was testing secret electronic equipment for the United States Army, were killed instantly when the wing of the plane ripped off the roof of one building and smashed into a second block shortly after taking off from Los Angeles Airport

Workers digging through the burned wreckage of the second block of flats reported finding two additional bodies late in the afternoon.

A schoolgirl who leapt from the top of one of the buildings as the plane struck it and burst into flames, was admitted to hospital with a fractured leg. Her fall was cushioned by a bystander.

A woman was listed as missing after the police bad checked through a list of residents of the destroyed buildings. The Mitchell had already made one run to Palmdale, 50

miles north-west of Los Angeles, and was on a second run when an engine failed soon after take-off.

Eye-witnesses say the plane

failed to gain height and the pilot headed for a -park. As young men and girls playing baseball scattered for their lives, the aircraft veered away, its pilot trying to land in an alley between the two buildings.