MONOPLANE CRASH

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 8

MONOPLANE CRASH

SCENE A BUSY STREET

PILOT ESCAPES LIGHTLY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, September 10.

A small high-wing monoplane Sky Baby crashed in, one of. Newcastle's busiest and most-thickly populated suburban streets, Lindsay Street, Hamilton, without doing much damage except to itself and parts of a house against which it ran. Spectators declared that the Sky Baby was forced down by engine trouble. They saw something drop from, the front of the .^machine when it was about a quarter of a mile from Lindsay Street, : and from then on the propeller did not appear to revolve. The machine went into a half-spin. The right wing struck an electric light pole and was torn off. The machine finished partly on the footpath and partly in a side passage of the residence of Mr! Roy Gladys. The latter and his brother-in-law, Mr. George Stronach, pulled Pilot Frank Cook, 21, unconscious from thfe cockpit of the badly-crumpled monoplane. He soon regained consciousness and merely had to be treated in hospital for slight concussion and cuts. Cook said that his engine cut out at 500 ft. He had tried to reach the nearby Newcastle racecourse, but had been compelled to attempt a landing in the street.

The footpath was fortunately vacant at the point where the monoplane struck it. Women who had been talking at front gates in the vicinity had run into their homes after a warning shout by Mr. Stronach, who saw that a crash was inevitable. Mr. Stronach said that the monoplane hit the electric light pole about five feet from the top. It fell across the footpath and some of the electric light wires came down with it. The machine's nose broke through the gate opening on the side passage of Mr. Gladys's home, and ran up against the corner of the front verandah, knocking a post out of alignment and showering the ground with benzine. . •

The Sky Baby is an experimental machine, and air regulations restrict its flying to within three miles of an Aerodrome. It had done about 600 hours* flying in Sydney. Pilot Cook is one of the most competent airmen the Newcastle Aero Club has trained.