PILOT’S ESCAPE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 13

PILOT’S ESCAPE

Plane Crashes At Night Near Ashburton GORSE HEDGE STRUCK Occupant Receives Only Minor Abrasions By Telegraph—Press Association, Ashburton, March 25. A miraculous escape from death was experienced by Pilot Otiicer E. S. Reynolds when a Vickers Vildebeeste bomber crashed during night-flying exercises about seven miles east of Ashburton last night. Marks indicate that the landing wheels struck a high gorse fence, the plane touching ground a few yards inside the fence. With its nose well

down and the propeller churning up the ground, the machine ran for 60 yards, the plane somersaulting twice, coming to rest on its back nearly 200 yards from the fence. The engine was torn out of the machine apparently when it first hit the ground and, rolling 150 yards, struck the wreckage of the aeroplane. Thus, having miraculously escaped death in the crash, the pilot had a second escape. Petrol and oil were ■ pouring from the tanks in the shattered nose of the plane, and, as the wreckage came to a standstill, the hot engine, rolling over the ground, crashed into one of the wings about three yards from the body of the plane. Had it rolled into a pool of petrol there would probably have been a tire and the airman would have suffered severe burns before he could have freed himself from the cockpit.

The plane’s undercarriage was torn off, the nose was completely smashed in, the top wing was shattered and the lower wing broken beyond repair.

The pilot crawled out of the wreck with ouly minor abrasions and sought assistance at a nearby house. He did not know he was near the ground until the plane struck the hedge, and he had no opportunity to light the wingtip flares. The machine hit the ground at the normal cruising speed of 120 miles an hour. Had the line of flight been two chains to the left the plane would have struck a belt of inacrocarpa trees. There is also a cross line of trees a quarter of a mile further on, but fortune favoured the pilot in that the plane came down in a clear Held. This morning the watch in the front cockpit was still ticking. One landing wheel stood crookedly high above the ruins, the other lying on the upturned lower wing. The nose of the machine was smashed in toward the cockpit, and it seemed remarkable that the cockpit did not collapse on the pilot as it struck the ground. The tail unit was smashed to pieces. When the switch in the cockpit was turned, the lights on the plane all lit up, though' some were swinging in the breeze, having been ripped from their usual places. Pilot Officer Reynolds is one of the pupil officers who, after training by aero clubs, are undergoing short courses at the Royal New Zealand Air Force Station, Wigram. At the time of the crash he was making a flight to Ashburton and back as part of his normal training routine. Last evening several similar flights were niade. It is stated “that the plane, which was taken back to Wigram to-day by motor lorry, will be rebuilt.