AIR TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 20

AIR TRAGEDY

FOUR LIVES LOST

NOTED LONDON JOURNALIST

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, February 6.

While engaged in an enterprising and constructive contribution to the safety of civil aviation, a well-known London journalist, Mr. Harold Pemberton, and his three companions were killed on a lonely Scottish mountain when their aeroplane, chartered by the "Daily Express," crashed in a mist. The machine was burned' out, and its occupants were evidently killed immediately. The objective of the flight was to survey the civil air routes proposed by the Maybury Committee, appointed in 1935, which recommended a plan to organise an experimental system of aerial services between specified and widely separated centres of population. ~

Mr. Pemberton (a son of Sir Max Pemberton, the novelist) was accompanied by a photographer, a pilot, and a wireless operator. He had. written several articles when the aeroplane and its crew vanished. A search was conducted for two days, but the machine and the dead bodies were discovered, largely by accident, when a shepherd was looking for some missing sheep. The nose of the machine was buried in the ground, 20ft from the top of Darnaw, a 1550 ft peak near Newton Stewart, Wigtonshire. 'It was' a few miles off the route from the Renfrew airport to the Speke airport, near Liverpool. ' It is believed that the crash occurred when the machine was flying blind in a fog. Ice had formed on .the wings, and the wireless apparatus had. been short. circuited. It was evident that fire broke out immediately after the ground was struck, and it was clear that the machine hit the ground at great speed. , . . ' ' - ■■■, Mr. Pemberton was a; D.5.0., and he was killed at the peak of his career. He was 47 years of age, and one of the best-known motoring correspondents. He began as a junior reporter on the "Daily Express" some years before the War, and later joined the "Daily Mail" under Lord Northcliffe. He was one of the first to join the Colours when the War broke out and received a commission in the Lancashire Fusiliers. One of his feats was the capture of a canal from the Germans after 180 Allied troops had been wiped out at this strong point. In this action he worked a machine-gun single-handed. He was awarded the. Military Cross, but this was subsequently cancelled and the D.S.O. substituted. He was also awarded the Croix de Guerre with I Palm.

After the war, as motoring correspondent, he set a fashion in specialised journalism. Including the war years, he spent 17 years with the "Daily Mail," and in 1929 he rejoined the "Daily Express." He made a reputation as correspondent in the Abyssinian and the Spanish wars. He foresaw the Abyssinian war and volunteered as the first British journalist to penetrate what was largely an unknown" country^