SEAPLANE TRAGEDY

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 July 1939, Page 7

SEAPLANE TRAGEDY

{ THREE MEN DROWNED.

[BY CABLE —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.]

NEW YORK, July 16.

Three lives were lost and five persons were rescued when a coastguard seaplane on a flight to bring ashore a sick sailor crashed into the sea. The seaplane, with a crew of six was dispatched from New York at the urgent request of the oceanographic survey schooner Atlantis, which is 150 miles off the coast and which reported that a member of her crew was critically ill With pneumonia. The seaplane landed alongside the vessel and transferred the sick man, but in attempting to take off again a pontoon struck a wave, causing the seaplane to plunge nose first into the ocean. The pilot, the co-pilot, and the patient were drowned. Two coastguardsmen suffered broken-backs.

PLANE SINKS SUDDENLY

NEW YORK, July 16.

The Coastguard hospital seaplane, when returning with the pneumonia patient from the ship, was 150 miles out at sea when she crashed into the ocean and sank. The ’plane sank so suddenly that the patient and two members of its crew were drowned.

The Atlantis, which is a floating laboratory, owned by the Oceanographic Institute, rescued five men, two of whom were seriously injured. The patient, a member of the Atlantis’ crew, was undergoing treatment in accordance with wireless instructions from a hospital ashore, pending the arrival of the mercy plane. The crash occurred during the takeoff.