SOMERSAULT INTO SEA

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 140, 18 June 1929, Page 9

SOMERSAULT INTO SEA

TRAWLER STOPS SINKING

AXES USED TO OPEN CABIN

Australian. Press Association. (Received 18th June, 1 p.m.)

LONDON, 17th June.

The wonderful record of the Imperial Airways was rudely shattered to-day when the City of Ottawa nose-dived in the Channel. She had thirteen people aboard when she left Croydon at 10.30 a.m. for Zurich. She sent out an S.O.S. fifteen miles across the Channel. The pilot immediately turned back,' but three miles from Folkestone, wirelessed that he was landing in the sea alongside a trawler which was the first'on the scene. The plunging 'plane sent up a huge column of water, somersaulting and smashing her wings immediately. She was beginning to sink, but the trawler got grappling irons under the 'plane and cleverly kept part of the machine above the water-line, while the crew used axes against the outside walls of the cabin and thus reached the imprisoned passengers. These had been thrown'in a heap when' the 'plane dived. Some were already beyond human aid owing to injuries or had been drowned in the inrush of water, but four passengers and the mechanic were taken off. Efforts at rescue continued for an hour before the body of a woman was extricated from the cabin. An attempt was then made to tow the 'plane with the bodies inside. ' When the pilot cutter came in eight of the shore, she signalled for an ambulance. The injured, including two women, were placed in' a rowing boat,and taken to hospital. The body of Mrs! Ickerson, a relative of Mrs.,and Miss Fleming, both of Sydney, who were rescued, was also taken ashore covered with the Union Jack. Four bodies are still in the City of Ottawa. .