AIR FORCE PLANE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 156, 30 December 1940, Page 9

AIR FORCE PLANE

INSTRUCTOR & TRAINEE KILLED

FAMILY'S LUCKY ESCAPE

TRAGEDY AT ASHHURST

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) FALMERSTON N., This Day. Two men were killed when an Airspeed Oxford training machine from Ohakea crashed through the middle of a two-storey wooden house, on Siberia, the property of Mr.. C. M. Kebbell, near Ashhurst, at the entrance to the Manawatu Gorge, this, morning. The men were:— ; Sergeant R. Brooke-Taylor, aged 25, an instructor, formerly of Christ- . church, where his wife lives at 290 Madras Street, Christchurch. Leading Aircraftman T. A. H. Alexander, a trainee nearing the close of his period at Ohakea, of Kohu- j kohu, North Auckland, aged 26. Both men were killed instantly, the machine hitting the house square on at the eaves and passing right through it. The machine was smashed to pieces. . One engine and the tangled wreckage of the cockpit finished up 100 yards from the dwelling and the other engine about 50 yards further on in a creek at the bottom of a gully. The bodies of both men were still strapped to their seats near the wrecked cockpit. About 10 minutes before the plane crashed the four children of Mr. and Mrs. Kebbell, one of them a baby, were in the nursery with their nurse, Miss M. Champion. The machine went J straight through the nursery, leaving] nothing but a square, gaping hole. The floor was littered with broken boards and small debris. Practically everything in the room was swept clear. FAMILY AT BREAKFAST. The children and their nurse were having breakfast on one side of the house on the ground floor. Mr. and Mrs: Kebbell were in the breakfast-, room on the other side. There were other persons in this area also. The machine passed through the residence squarely between the two groups. There were six adults and four chil- . dren in the house or in adjacent buildings. One woman was in the washhouse and one end of the gable was ripped off this building just before the machine crashed into the house itself. Two persons saw the plane approach and.witnessed the smash. They were Mr. M. J. Murphy, a sharemilker engaged on the property, and his son Maurice, aged 18. They said the machine was approaching from the direction of Levin and was flying towards the gorge to the right of the Kebbells' home when it turned to the left. Both thought that it might hit the cow bails, but it missed these and then missed some power lines. While still banked to turn, the plane hit the house with a terrific impact. Both said it was just like an explosion and then it-was all over.- - • • LIKE A SMASHED BOX. - The damage to the house suggested that" when the plane passed through it one engine travelled below the ceiling ;6f the nursery and the other above the ceiling. The room was left like a box with the ends out and all the roofing above it was missing. Heavy beams had been sheared off and hardly one- board was nailed to .another; The top of a flight of stairs was mown away and pieces of the banisters were found away out in a paddock..* They had evidently been carried part of the way by the plane. * The plane hit the building square on and went through three' walls. Against one wall stood a wardrobe in which Miss Champion had all her belongings. This morning she had left only what she was wearing. Her and the children's clothes lay somewhere in the debris on the floor, in the garden, or possibly in a paddock. There was a crumpled child's bed 50 yards.from the house, and a mattress near the main part of the wrecked plane mutely, told how narrowly the children had missed disaster. One room only out of eight on the top floor of the house remained undamaged. The middle of the house also suffered damage on the ground floor.