DUTCH ’PLANE CRASH

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 304, 8 December 1931, Page 8

DUTCH ’PLANE CRASH

DETAILS OF TRAGEDY NOSE-DIVE INTO RICE FIELD. COL. BRINSMEAD’S CONDITION CRITICAL SINGAPORE, December 7. Later details of the Dutch mail plane crash indicate that the ground was soft owing to rains. The plane arrived from Alorstar on, Saturday afternoon with Colonel Brinsmead as a passenger. On Sunday morning the plane made unsuccessful attempts to rise. It taxied a mile across the aerodrome to the end of the field, where there are two canals bordered by embankments several feet high. It appears that the pilot made a final lift of the plane, which rose about three feet over the canal, but the wheels collided with the embankment and the plane nose-dived into a nee field with such force that the motors were forced into the cabin, killing outright a French city engineer at Bankkok, a Dutch commercial traveller, tho second pilot and a mechanic. Tho ground staff immediately rushed to the sdene. Colonel Brinsmead was extricated from tho wreckage seriously injured and unconscious, also the first pilot, who subsequently died. Colonel Brinsmead’s conditions is critical. This is the first serious accident that has overtaken the Dutch mail service since its inception over two years ago. The mileage covered is 833,000. INFORMATION SOUGHT. Melbourne, December 7. A message received by the Civil Aviation Department says Colonel Brinsmead joined the Dutch air mail plane with the object of reporting to Kingsford-Smith on the condition of aerodromes between Alorstar and Rangoon. The Dutch machine was a Fokker Fl2 monoplane with three Wasp engines. Officials of the Australian Air Department express the opinion that Colonel Brinsmead probably was invited by the Dutch authorities to hasten onward to England aboard their craft. The Prime Minister’s Department has cabled for the fullest information concerning Colonel Brinsmead's accident. MAKING FLYING SAFER DOUBLE-CASED ’PLANE. London, December 7. A young French aviator, Sauvant, of Nice, has invented a double-cased aeroplane, which he intends to ignite and crash to the earth, accompanied bv a mechanic, from a height of 3000 feet io the Alpes Maritimes. Sauvant declares that the occupants can escape uninjured from the inner case when tho fire is extinguished. He made satisfactory experiments with a miniature machine, in which ho placed a lamb. He also dropped an ostrich egg containing a hen’s egg from 375 feet and the latter was unbroken.