AIR CRASH MYSTERY

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 January 1935, Page 4

AIR CRASH MYSTERY

MISHAP TO DUTCH LINER TRAGEDY IN THE DESERT FATE 0E SEVEN OCCUPANTS. Mystery still surrounds the fatal erasli of the giant K.L.M. air linei when over Iraq in the course ot an attempted record flight to the Dutch Last Indies. It appeared that the wonderful machine, which had earned the plaudits of the world for its magnificent performance in securing second speed place and first handicap prize in the Melbourne Centenary air race in October, landed on the desert, made boggy by thunderstorms, at a speed ot 130 m.p.h., the seven occupants being killed either by the crash or by the accompanying fire. The mail which the machine was carrying was partly destroyed by fire, while many hags burst open, the contents being scattered over the countryside by the high wind. These letters were collected and returned to another air mail service. The crash occurred on December 19, close to the village of Itutbah Wells, about 209 miles from Bagdad. When extricated from the smouldering debris. which defied approach for 30 hours, the bodies of the victims' were so burned that identification was almost impossible. The rescue party arrived in armoured ears and aeroplanes from the Royal Air Force depot. Doctors clambered into the chaired and blackened interior, acrid with lames, although the desert winds had been blowing through .the broke;! windows for 30 hours after the crash. The 14 seats and the dining tables were •educed to distorted frames. Captain Beckman, the pilot of the plane which came second in the Centenary race was an experienced airman. with 9*500 flying hours. The wireless operator, Van Zadelhoff. was the mly survivor of the disaster to the air liner Stork at Bangkok in 1931. in which Colonel Brinsmead, Controller if Civil Aviation in Australia, received injuries from which he died in Melbourne about two years later.

FAR M E NITER PUZZLED Aviation experts at first attributed the disaster to atmospheric disturbances in the region of Rutbah Wells, they include violent upward and downward currents of air, capable ot throwing machines out ol control. Subsequently, when the K.L.M. company’s special committee of investigation delivered its preliminary report, it- was believed that lightning had struck a small fixed aerial touching the bag-gage-hold. while the machine was flying in a thunderstorm at night. Medical evidence which was stated at If is time to prove that the contention that the victims had all died lrom lightning was subsequently questioned when the manager of the company some days later declared that the commissioners now believed that the victims died through their necks being broken by the crash. Fie said that tlie Actual cause of tfio accident was still unknown. The machine was in good Hying condition just before the disaster. and there wore no engine defects or constructional faults. After landing n the desert at 100 m.p.h. tlie machine •ontinued for 100 yards and then overtimed.

Chevalier Parmenticr, the K.L.M. jlot who flew the ’plane in the Centen;*y race, says: “I have frequently ftwn over the area of the disaster, ad I cannot suggest a possible cause. Bekman was one of the oldest K.L.M. outs. He lias flown the route sop res of times. The machine is the finest I hue ever piloted, first-class in all wethers.”