THE ATLANTIC CROSSING

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 289, 6 September 1928, Page 11

THE ATLANTIC CROSSING

FRENCH AIRMEN’S START AN UNEXPECTED PASSENGER FINANCIER OF FLIGHT HIDES IN MACHINE The French airmen, who have started on an attempt to fly the Atlantic, have an unex- K pected passenger with them, the young financier of the flight having hidden in the machine. (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copy right.) (Australian Press Assn —United Service.) Paris, September 4. Assolant and Lefevre, both sergeants in the French Army, took off at Toulon at 7 o’clock this morning in a machine called L’Oiseau Jaune (the Yellow Bird) for an Atlantic flight. The Ushant wireless station has broadcasted a message asking ships at sea to report the machine’s progress, and assist, if necessary. The message says that the following will be the route: Cape Finisterre, Azores, Halifax, New York. As the flyers were about to start a figure clad in a sweater was seen in the cabin. It was Monsieur Lotti, the son of the proprietor of the Hotel Lotti and the actual financier of the flight. He masqueraded under the name of Levy to deceive his father, who regards the flight as suicidal, and employed private detectives to watch his son’s movements. It transpires that young Lotti entered the ’plane in the night time and slept on the floor of the cabin. The detectives watching at Le Bourget were relieved at not seeing him attempt to enter, but when the ’plane was rising Lotti appeared and waved his cap at the astonished detectives. EIGHT KILLED IN CRASH FAMILY OF FOUR WIPED OUT (Unit?(l Service.) (Rec. September 5, 7.15 p.m.) Vancouver, September 4. Ope family of four was wiped out in an aeroplane crash which altogether killed eight. The aeroplane .was entering Pocatello airport and was thirty feet off the ground when the pilot, Wheatley, turned sharply into the wind, which blew in gusts. The right wing collapsed and the ’plane crashed, nose down, turning over several times into rocky bushland. Wheatley’s wife and two children, who were returning from a holiday in Butte, two newspaper reporters, and two mining operators perished, three with broken necks. THE CRASH NEAR ADELAIDE DEATH OF MECHANIC Adelaide. September 5. George Nutson, tlie mechanic on the geroplane whicli crashed fourteen miles outside Adelaide, died from his injuries. Captain Scott, the pilot, behaved heroically. Although himself badly injured, he dragged Nutson from the burning ’plane ami then walked a long distance through crops and boggy country to a lonely farmhouse and obtained assistance. The accident was due to bad visibility, the machine striking a hill-top. MR. SCOTT’S BODY FOUND (Australian Press Assn-—United Service.) (Rec. September 5, 7.25 p.m.) New York, September 4. A message from Seattle, Washington, states that the body of Alexander MacCallum Scott, a former member of the British Parliament, drowned when a Seattle-Victoria monoplane crashed on August 25. was recovered to-day. AVIATION IN FRANCE REORGANISATION PLANS (Australian Press Association.) (Rec. September 5, 5.5 p.m.) Paris, September 4. M. Leygues has temporarily taken over the Ministry of Aviation, left vacant by the death of M. Bokanowski. He conferred with the InspectorGeneral in reference to M. Bokanowski’s plans for reorganisation. Until a' new policy is developed the Government will try to discourage attempts at trans-Atlantic record-breaking and delay the construction of naval and military ’planes.