AIR DISASTER

Evening Star, Issue 22087, 22 July 1935, Page 7

AIR DISASTER

DUTCH LINER CRASHES THIRTEEN PEOPLE KILLED PreM Awoeiation—By Telegraph—Copyright MILAN, July 20. The Royal Dutch air liner Phakg, of the flying hotel type, while en route from Milan to Frankfurt, crashed near San Bernardino. Switzerland, during a severe storm. The thirteen occupants were' killed, including two Britons. The others were Dutch. The cause of the disaster is unknown. COLLIDED WITH MOUNTAINBID3 PILOT’S ATTEMPT TO GET ABOVE FOG. V BERNE, July 20. The British , dead in the “ flying hotel ” disaster are Commander Arthur Watts' and Mr Louis Mariano Nesbit, a mining engineer and. author of romantic books on- Abyssinia, where he adventurously travelled in districts from which whites formerly had not returned alive. Commander Watts was hastening from Italy to rejoin his wife, who recently gave birth, to a second son.

r An airline company official states' that j Pilot Vanderveist, when, crossing the frontier of Switzerland, encountered a fog and asked for a bearing from Milan 15 minutes before the crash. He then wound in his aerial owing to a thunderstorm He came out’ of the clouds and found himself too near the ground. He therefore attempted to climb up' through the clouds and collided with the mountainside.

The villagers ajt San Bernardino state that the plane crashed into a pine forest clothing a, deep ravine with such violence that debris flung up by the propeller was later found embedded in - « tree 50 yards distant. The rescuers rushed to the spot arid found all dead but Mademoiselle Hermanides, thq first of the four stewardesses recently engaged, who was making her first trip froin Holland. She was hastily extricated, bdt died in a few minutes. HOLLAND DEEPLY SHOCKED THE HAGUE. July 20. The public are deeply shocked at the third disaster in a week. The airline company announces the suspension of the Milan service until the cause of the disaster is established. ’ It will be operated by Lufthansa.. [Comander Arthur Watts, D. 5.0., was educated at Dulwich College and studied at Antwerp, Paris, and Slade School, London. He contributed ‘ humorous drawings to * Punch, Life, , .etc. He served in the ,R,N.V.R., ■ November, 1914, .to January,. 1919 ; 4 *.. (despatches) ; was in the Zeebrugge ‘ !raid, April 23, January, 1918. (D. 5.0.), and at sinking of Vindictive, Ostend Harbour, May 10, 1918.]