CRASH INTO SCHOOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18996, 18 April 1925, Page 2 (Supplement)

CRASH INTO SCHOOL.

AN AVIATOR'S FALL. YOUNG GIRL KILLED. MISTRESS BADLY INJURED. Hurtling through the air at over 100 miles an hour, a Royal Air Force aeroplane cut a council school building in half at Warsash, Hants, while a cookery class was in progress. Tho airman, Alexander Montgomery, whose parents live within a few yards of tho accident, was but slightly injured, but one small pupil, Dora Ball, aged nine, died in tho South Hants Hospital, where her schoolmistress, Miss Booker, also lay badly , injured. Pilot Officer Montgomery had left Kenley Aerodrome, Surrey, early, and arrived over Warsash shortly after 10 a.m. He was first noticed travelling at a great height and speed, and then circled round the village, which lies five miles west of Fareham. Tho weather was fine and cold, and the machine appeared to bo all right until it nosedived. It came so low that tho village was startled by the noiso of tho engine, and it was observed that as the aeroplane roso again one of tho wings struck a tree on tho west side of the village school. Noae-Dive at Terrific Speed. % The airman was obviously in difficulties, and lie tried to circle round the school. He negotiated the main building, missing it, only by a fow yards. Ihen ho nose-dived at a terrific speed straight across tho middlo of the cook,cry school, a wooden structure 60ft. square, at tho side of tho main building. The effect as the machine crashed into tho building was to cut it in half. A graphic description of the accident was given by Mr. E. G. Loder, master in charge of tho council school, who Was tho first to rush to the scene. " Tho machine passed over tho school once," he said, " and then struck the tree. Tho airman tried to rise, but failed to get any height owing to his damaged wing. The noise. was so deafening that all the school children stood up, and I rushed to the window, expecting a crash. " As I got to the window I saw the machine coming with much greater velocity | than an express train straight down at tho cookery school. " The noise of the impact was terrific. I could hear tho screams of the children iis tho building' collapsed. Escape of the Pilot. " To my amazement, when I got to the spot tho pilot was out of his seat and walking about in a dazed sort of way. His face was cut, and ho tried to light a cigarette. Otherwise he seemed unhurt. "At first I did not seo Dora Ball. Then I found her lying among the debris not far from her mistress, who was injured in tho face, and unconscious. " The poor little thing had put up her hands as if to ward oft a blo\v, but she had received terrible head wounds and was senseless." Thero was a pathetic incident in tho village. The sobbing parents of Dora Ball caino back from tho South Hants Hospital to tell her school mistress, Miss Newberry, that their little girl was dead. Mr. Ball is an officer on H.M.S. Spencer, and both he and his wife were with Dora until she died, but sho never spoke of the accident. " She was the light of our lives," said Mrs. Ball, with tears in her eyes. " She went off to school this morning so happily, as she was wearing a new coat, and her last words to mo were, ' Oh, I do feci proud, mummy, in my new coat.' "