CRASH AT OSTEND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 21, 22 December 1937, Page 9

CRASH AT OSTEND.

AIRPORT OFFICER CHARGED. LONDON, Dec. 20. A message from Bruges, Belgium, states that the Public Prosecutor has ordered notice to be served on Captain Daems, superintendent of the Ostend airport, of a charge of manslaughter arising out of the crash in which the Grand Duke Georges of I|esse and his faniily were killed last month. The action follows the examination of Captain Daems at the Magisterial inquiry. MESSAGE TO 'PLANE. REASON FOR CHARGE. LONDON, Dec. 21. The Daily Mail says it has not been disclosed why a charge of manslaughter has been made against Captain Daems, but it is understood the charge concerns the non-dispatch of a radio message to the ill-fated 'plane. It is believed the inquiry showed that when Brussels officials learned that Ostend had been suddenly blacked-out by fog they ordered the Ostend aerodrome to wireless the pilot to make direct for Croydon. It is said Daems admitted this message was not sent. All eleven occupants were incinerated when the London-bound Helgian Sabena. airliner, seeking to land in dense fog on the outskirts of Ostend on November 16, struck a brickworks chimney, broko in two, crashed, and burst into flames. The members of the Hesse family who were killed in the crash were the Grand Duke Georges of Hesse and Rhine, aged 31, who succeeded to the title a month ago; his wife. Princess Cecille* of Greece and Denmark, a cousin of the Duchess of Kent; his mother, the Dowager Grand Duchess of Hesse and Rhine, second wife of the late Grand Duke Ernest, and formerly Princess Eleonore of Solmes-Hohensolms-Lich • his two sons. Prince Louis, aged 6, and Prince Alexandre, aged 4. The Grar.d Duke and his family boarded the 'plane at Munich, and were going to London to attend the wedding of his brother. Prince Louis of Hesse, social attache of the German Embassy in London, to Margaret Campbell Geddes, daughter of Sir Auckland Geddes.