AIRMAN'S DEATH

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 110, 5 November 1935, Page 5

AIRMAN'S DEATH

WATCHED BY FAMILY

Before the eyes of his horrified father and sister, a young airman was killed when his machine crashed into the sea off Dieppe recently. He was Mr. Max Huffer, aged 24, son of Mr. E. Huffer, an Englishman living in Paris, says Ihe "Daily Express." x , • He and his father had travelled from Paris to meet the cross-Channel steamer Rouen, in which his sister Christine was returning to France from England. The father made the journey by car, and his <■ son in a single-seater touring aeroplane. ■ ■

The young airman's, death-dive was seen by his sister from the deck of the steamer and by his father from the end of the pier. He had circled three times round the steamer, to the delight of the passengers, and then made off towards the west. ' ■

Suddenly, when the machine was flying barely 200. yards above the water, it fell like a stone. Captain Robert, master of the Rouen, immediately stopped his ship and ordered a lifeboat away. Mr. Huffer was found still securely strapped in his seat amid the wreckage of the machine.

He was attended to by s doctor, who was a passenger in the Rouen, but died within a few minutes without regaining ■ consciousness. Meanwhile Mr. Huffer, senior, standing on the pier, rushed to the boat station, where news of the tragedy had been received by wireless from the Rouen, but seeing his Haggard face the officials there were unwilling to tell him that his son had been killed. '

In a few minutes, however, the Rouen was entering the harbour, and it was left for the young airman's sister to break the news to her father. : * - . '■ ■ ■■ r