AIR LINER WRECK

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 183, 1 May 1933, Page 9

AIR LINER WRECK

Survivors’ Awful Plight SIX DAYS AMID SNOW While Companions Perished PINNED BENEATH PLANE (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.! (Received April 29, 7.35 p.m.). Rome, April 28. Police and Fascist!, searching the Ajiennines, found the wreckage of the French air liner, which had wirelessed that it had been caught in a storm. The machine was in a snowcovered forest 5000 feet above Cosenza. Five occupants, including the pilot and the wireless operator, were dead. Three were alive, including tlie woman passenger. The survivors lived for six days in the back portion of the cabin, which was intact, subsisting on chocolate and biscuits. The machine crashed into trees in a fog, and the survivors’ escape was due to the branches breaking tbe force of the crash.

The survivors are all suffering nervous prostration and relate terrible stories of the sufferings of the dead passengers who were injured and pinned beneath the wreckage deep in the snow when the plane overturned. The mechanic was practically incapacitated by injuries. The others strenuously but unavailingly strove to lift tbe solid mass of wreckage. They lighted flares to attract help at nighttime. Huddled in the cabin and tortured by the piteous cries of the sufferers beneath, the survivors fled from the wreckage at daybreak, only to be driven back by cold and hunger. On the second day gradually the cries of the imprisoned grew fainter as they succumbed to cold and exhaustion. One man attributes his escape to changing seats with a passenger in order to give him a view of tlie scenery. BAVARIAN TRAGEDY Four .in Junkers Killed (Received April 29, 7.30 p.m.) Berlin, April 29. A Junker’s aeroplane belonging to a German-Chinese company crashed in Bavaria during trials, killing all four occupants. Including a woman.