AVIATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 December 1934, Page 5

AVIATION

N. AMERICAN CRASHES. [by CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] (Recd. December 26, 10.30 a.m.) VANCOUVER, December 24. Twelve deaths, the result of aeroplane accidents, marred Christmas. Floyd Delong disappeared m rugged country. between Elko (Nevada) and Mountain City. Aboard were three children, who had visited Elko to participate in the funeral of a school chum. Rescue planes found all dead, where the plane crashed on the hillside, in snowclad country. Russell Riggs, veteran air mail pilot, crashed in the mountainside during a snowstorm on the Tennessee Mountains. Hope is abandoned for seven occupants of another aeroplane, which fell into the Gulf of California, between Mazatlan and La Paz. The dead include Dr. Spacho, engineer for the construction of great ocean piers, at La Paz. DUTCH PLANE DISASTER. TITE HAGUE, December 24. The Royal Dutch Air Line, in a statement, says that, as a preliminary to the disaster, the flying hotel K.L.M. was struck by lightning. There is no evidence of any constructional fault. Geysendorfer corroborates the lightning theory of the destruction of the plane. Uiver declares that the vessel was flying on its usual route from Cairo to Baghdad. All of the instruments indicate that it was maintaining its usual height, and was not attempting to land. A Baghdad message states that Air Line officials waded one hundred yards through a swamp to reach the machine, which was lying upside down in a sea of water, and the police have allowed nobody to approach within five miles of the wreck--1 age.