ABRUPT CONCLUSION

Northern Advocate, 7 April 1927, Page 5

ABRUPT CONCLUSION

DI PINEDO'S FLIGHT,

FIRE DESTROYS SEAPLANE

(Received 10.26 a.m.) NEW YORK, April G

A message from Roosevelt, Arizona, states that the flight of Colonel di Finedo, the Italian aviator who was engaged in a scientific and experimental tour of the world, ended today when the seaplane Santa Marina caught fire as she was refuelling there preparatory to hopping off for San Diego.

Colonel di 'Pinedo and tlie crew are safe, but the machine is a total loss. Immediate efforts will be made to raise the engine, which is resting at the bottom of Roosevelt Lake at a depth of 60 feot. —A. and N.Z.

SUDDEN BLAST,

GREAT CONSTERNATION,

(Received 1 p.m.) NEW YORK, April 6,

Colonel di Pinedo’s flight was halted at Roosevelt Lake, Arizona, when fire destroyed the giant twin-motored

monoplane. Di Pinedo was talking to newspaper men on the shore when a sudden blast was heard on the lake at the landing buoy and the big ship was instantly a mass of flames. Mechanics adjusting the machine in preparation for the next leg of the flight leaped overboard and swam to safety, while the plane burned furiously. Nobody was injured. Di Pinedo had come ashore only a .short time previous to the disaster. He had stayed with the craft in the middle of the lake while the mechanics tuned up the-engines and began refilling with 300 ..gallons of .petrol. The blast occurred just as the airman was outlining his plans for proceeding to San Diego immediately on a monster flight of 400 miles. It is presumed that some gasoline being poured into the fuel tanks dripued on to part of the heated engine, causing an explosion.—-A. and N.Z. •