EXPLOSION IN AIR

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 260, 29 July 1932, Page 11

EXPLOSION IN AIR

Plane’s Crash to Earth ALL ABOARD KILLED Lightning Believed Cause / FUSELAGE BROKEN UP By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. (Rec. July 28, 7 p.m.) London, July 27. Bruce, the twenty-one-year-old son of Mr. Alfred Bossom, Conservative member for Maidstone, who recently decided that he could not sacrifice record-breaking for marriage to a Knightsbridge girl, tragically ended his career yesterday when piloting an aeroplane which crashed near Farnham. He and the passengers, one of whom was Prince Otto yon Erbach-Fuerstenau, were all killed. They were taking Prince Otto, who was on his first visit to England, as their guest, on a pleasure flight from Heston to Southampton, and encountered bad weather. The crash occurred not far from the houses of Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Snowden. An eye-witness said that the aeroplane emerged suddenly from the clouds. Then there was a terrific explosion. The bodies were widely separated when found several hundred feet from the wreckage, and were so mutilated that they were only identifiable by articles In the pockets. Only a few soldiers and pedestrians witnessed the accident. An officer of the Border Regiment saw the plane emerge from the clouds, wingless, “like a flying bedstead.” He was horrified to see the fuselage break up and bodies fall, followed by the petrol tank. The “News-Chronicle” calls attention to the extraordinary similarity between the trash and the Meophan disaster on July 21, 1931, when, following an explosion in an aeroplane, fragments fell from a thick cloud. It is believed that the crash was due to lightning striking the plane. Mrs. Bossom often went for flights with her son. His ambition was to break the records to South Africa and Australia, and across the Atlantic. He narrowly escaped death in May, 1931, when he crashed in Cheshire and his machine took fire. A FATAL JUMP Parachute Caught in Plane London, July 27. Five thousand persons watching a parachute demonstration at Littleport saw a Birmingham parachutist, R. Hopkins, jump from the wing at a height of 500 feet. The parachute became entangled with the elevator, and Mr. Hopkins hung suspended from the aeroplane’s tail while the pilot vainly tried to regain -control. The aeroplane nosedived from 100 feet to the ground and crashed. Mr. Hopkins was killed and the pilot was critically injured.