DARING EXPERIMENT

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 275, 16 August 1932, Page 9

DARING EXPERIMENT

Crash-proof Aeroplane PUSHED OVER 600 ft. CLIFF i • Nice, August 14. Making a second demonstration of his so-called crash-proof aeroplane, M. Albert Sauvant had himself and his machine pushed over the edge of a 600feet ravine at Duranus. He suffered a broken arm. M. Sauvant is a French airman who claims to have invented a erash-proot aeroplane. On March 24 he emerged unscathed from, a modest but suecesstul test in which the machine, with him in it, was hurled over a. vertical 70-foot cliff. He bad been hoping for some time to demonstrate the qualities of his invention by crashing a machine from a height of 3000 ft., but until March 24 the police had always intervened, usually removing some essential part of the machine as a precaution. On successive occasions they bore away a wheel, another wheel, the undercarriage, and .finally, the wings. At this, stage they thought it sate to leave the airman to his O, Nothing e daunted, M. Sauvant conveyed the fuselage, which is the essential part of the invention, to the rocky heights of Escragnolles, above Grasse, and after getting inside the machine, induced several of his friends to push it a™, a cliff It fell like a plummet for 70ft. and then rolled another 300 ft. down a steep slope. At the end of the run the outer shell of the machine was a complete wreck, but neither the> mner shell, insulated by a special system of shock-absorbers, nor M. Sauvant suffered the slightest damage. The Mayor ot Escragnolles, who was among the spec tators, obligingly swore an to the reality of the exploit. It was understood that M. Sauyant itatended to. reconstruct his machine and try a reany serious fall as soon as possible.