OBITUARY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 60, 12 March 1934, Page 7

OBITUARY

COLONEL H. C. BRINSMEAD

(Received March 12, 11 a.m.) MELBOURNE,' This Day. The death is announced of Colonel H. C. Brinsmead as the result of injuries suffered in an aeroplane crash at Bangkok, Siam, on December 6, 1931.

Colonel Brinsmead, who was Controller of Civil Aviation in Australia, was a passenger in the Australia-Eng-land Christmas air-mail liner Southern Sun, which crashed while leaving Alor Star (Malay State) on November 26, 1931. The Southern Sun left Sydney carrying 13261b of Christmas mail, including more than 3000 letters from New Zealand. The occupants of the machine were C. V. Allen, chief pilot; R. N. Boulton, engineer and co-pilot; G. Gallaghan, wireless operator; Colonel Brinsmead, and B. Rubin, an Australian pastoralist. Two passengers, including a New Zealander, wero left behind, so heavily was the machine loaded. Tho air-liner reached Sourabaya on November 24 and Biatavia the same day. It halted for the night, proceeded the following day to Singapore, and arrived safely, departing after a brief stay for Alor Star. On November 26, the machine, while taking off from the aerodrome at Alor Star at a speed of 65 miles an hour,,struck an exceptionally glutinous patch of mud, following two and a half hours' tropical rain. The speed fell to 50 miles an hour and the machine was partly upended. Ten feet of the wing was severed and all the engine nacelles and front of the fuselage were telescoped. A portion of the kit was destroyed but the mails wero intact. Colonel Brinsmead suffered from crushed ribs, leg nr.d abdominal injuries. The most serious of his injuries was the damage which had been done to nerves controlling speech and the muscles of his left side. Pilot Allen was also slightly injured.