BLEW UP IN AIR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 103, 3 May 1945, Page 9

BLEW UP IN AIR

PLANE OVER SYDNEY

HOUSES SET ON FIRE

Rec. 1.45 pjn. SYDNEY, May 3. A Royal Air Force plane blew up in ■ the air over the Petersham suburb ot Sydney yesterday, killing the pilot and . the observer and scattering blazing . .wreckage over a wide area. Four houses were set on fire. In one of them a bed in which a man was ;.. asleep caught fire. He escaped from the room badly burned and with his -^pyjamas charred.

Several other persons, including two ■ babies, narrowly escaped death. The pilot and the observer, both aged * . 25, were members of the Royal Air . Force.

: .'- The pilot's body fell on the playground of a school where hundreds of •;■'^children, were at their lessons. The "dead observer was found on the roof

..of, a railway shed about 200 yards _away. Parts of the plane fell over an "area of two square miles. An engine, ■the airscrew, and the main portion of •-the fuselage crashed blazing into a

street, setting the front of a house on jare. A quarter of a mile away, the blazing petrol tank crashed between ■-; double-storeyed houses, setting both alight. A second petrol tank crashed through the roof and balcony of another, house, which was severely dam"aged by the resulting fire.

At one stage more than 50 firemen i--were fighting fires caused by the exploding plane. More than a hundred "■police were sent to control thousands of people who had gathered around the remains of the plane and the burning buildings. The police closed the streets and turned onlookers away.