CRASH IN STORM

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 188, 7 May 1931, Page 9

CRASH IN STORM

Noted Aviator Killed In South Africa

COMMANDER KIDSTON

Official Wirelew. Rugby, May 5.

It Is reported from South Africa that Commander Glen Kidston and Captain T. A. Gladstone were killed to-day when their aeroplane crashed during a violent dust storm at Van Reenen, Natal. The airmen had left Johannesburg in the morning on an air tour of the Union. A local storekeeper saw the machine crash In a sudden gale, and found Kidston’s visiting card on one of the bodies. Identity was afterward confirmed by the police. Only five weeks ago Kidston flew from England to Cape Town In the record time of six and a half days. In

Norway, during the war, and since as a racing‘motorist and airman, he had many remarkable escapes. Captain Gladstone, formerly of the Royal Naval Air Service, had done much to develop flying in Central Afflea. He was unmarried. Commander Kidston, who was 31, leaves a wife and child.

Commander Glen Kidston’s death has brought to a close a remarkable career. A midshipman at the age of 15 years, he was aboard the Hogue when it was torpedoed by a German submarine, and was picked up after 2J hours in the sea. He fought at Jutland on the battleship Orion, and was in a torpedoed ship again before the armistice came. A famous racing motorist, he was one of the most daring performers at Brooklands. In 1927 he was returning from an air pageant at Hamble in a motorboat, and was travelling at 50 miles an hour when the boat broke in two, throwing him, his wife, and three others into the water, from which they were rescued by Air Force motor-boats. In August of the following year, he entered for the Ulster Tourist Trophy, and crashed into a hedge while his car was speeding at 95 miles an hour. _ Ever seeking thrills, be organised a big-game hunting expedition to Kenya, in the machine from which Loewenstein, the Belgian financier, fell into the North Sea, but the expedition came to an end when the machine crashed in the Sudan, and the party was piclfed up by a steamer. He was the sole survivor of the disaster of November, 1929, when a German air-liner crashed near Croydon. He scrambled through a hole in the fuselage, his clothes on fire, and having extinguished the flames by rolling on the grass, set out in search of a telephone with which to communicate the news of the tragedy to the airport . x _ Early last year he again set out for Central Africa, this time in a light aeroplane, to photograph wild animals from the air. Only last mouth this millionaire airman flew from Loudon to Cape Town in 6 days 10 hours, a magnificent effort that was a fitting climax to his career.