“I Will Die Tomorrow ”

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7201, 26 April 1930, Page 10

“I Will Die Tomorrow ”

And He Nearly Did.. • Death Missed by Inches in Sky-Ride .. •

XCUSE me for living. I’ll die tomorrow,” said Howard Thomas Firkin, of Sydney, jokingly. When the plane in which

1 lie was a passenger crashed at Maroubra the next day, his quip almost became a prophecy. In a quiet ward in the Royal South Sydney Hospital lies William Joseph Powell, the pilot of the plane. “Tell you about the crash? Oh, why bring that up? It was bad luck, that’s all. I often practise forced landings, but this was the first time I had, attempted one in that district,” he said.

“I was up about 500 feet when I shut the engine off to, glide down to an adjacent field. Soon I "realised that I had not sufficient: pace to reach it. I tried to switch the engine on again, but she would not ‘take.’ There was only one thing to do, land in the roadway.

“I had forgotten the telephone wires, and I thought we should land all right. Then we struck them and everything went ‘black.’ “A crash is not half so bad as I thought it would be. There was nothing to suggest a crash until we hit the wires, and then everything happened so quickly. I remember crawling out of the wreckage, but after that •. I feel all right now except for a headache.”

“The crash was a thrill to me,” said

Howard Firkin, who is now' a picturesque figure with a scar on his cheek, and a wound on the bridge of hiS; nose.

“Bill shouted to me ‘l’m going to glided down now, Howard.’ Suddenly we seemed to drop. I said to myself, ‘My God, what’s he doing now!’ Then I saw that we were going to crash. -I gripped the sides of the cock-pit. We struck the wires and there was a sheet of blue flame. We hit the ground and I saw the engine coming toward me. That was not very pleasant. It passed between my legs. I was lucky not to be blinded as the glasses of my goggles were smashed. Petrol was pouring over me from the broken pipe. “I thought the machine would catch fire and I struggled to escape. But I was jammed in and I had to be cut out. I cut my thigh trying, to get out. I must say I did feel a little frightened at the thought of fire.”

Howard Firkin intends to be Powell’s first passenger when the pilot is ready to fly again. He is hoping to gain a pilot’s ticket himself.