HYDROPLANE SMASH.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 592, 9 August 1913, Page 5

HYDROPLANE SMASH.

AIRMAN CODY KILLED. SONS WITNESS TRAGEDY. By Telegraph.--Press Association. —CopyrigUt London, Thursday. S. F. Cody, the noted airman, and passenger named VV. H. B. Evans, were killed by a fall during a flight at Fleet, Hampshire, to-day. Cody's sons. i,eon and Frank, witnessed (he accident. Leon intended to accompany his father, hut e;ave way at tho last minute to Evans, who was learning aviation. The machine was a new hydroplane, in which Cody had flown earlier in the morning. li appeared to double up the wings in. shooting u pwnrds,.and the whole mchine collapsed at, a height of 250 ft, apparently owing to tho body being too heavy for the wing.?. Cody flung himself from the machine before i!, reached (he ground, where Dt 1 jam. a do'.-; hoy a were camping. The hydroplane wan smashed to atoms, and the horn lied spectators found thiii Cody's nock way broken. They extricated Ev:;np, badly mangled, from the debris. The hydroplane wee- bin It for the Daily Maii y.'oiuo race, and had undergone constant trials this month. The iirst night to-day was one of 7 mi lee. Cody was- carrying passengers at five guines a llight. IJe jocularly said, "I may as well make a lillle pocket money " Evans was tho Oxford cricketer captain of I'.'O). Later he joined the Egyptian Civil Service and went to the Sudiin. Colonel Seely, in a message of sympathy to Mrs Cody, eulogised htr late husband's valuable services to the War Otlice. Cody's machine weighed a ton and was driven by a hundred horse power engine. Tho wings spanned sixty feet in length by {o;-!y Tour foot. It ia staled the machine was (ravelling at a rate of fifty miles an bout.