DUTCH LINER CRASHES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22629, 22 July 1935, Page 9

DUTCH LINER CRASHES

CAUGHT IN A STORM THIRTEEN PEOPLE KILLED (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) MILAN, July 20 (Received July 21, at (5.50 p.m.) The Royal Dutch air liner Phakg, of the flying hotel type, en route from Milan to Frankfurt, crashed near San Bernardino, Switzerland, during a severe storm. The thirteen occupants were killed, including two British. The others were Dutch. The cause of the disaster is unknown. PLANE STRIKES FOREST-CLAD RAVINE A TERRIFIC IMPACT PASSENGERS AND CREW ALL DEAD BERNE, July 20. (Received July 21, at 8 p.m.) The British dead in the flying hotel disaster are Commander Arthur Watts and Louis Mariano Nesbit, a mining engineer and author of romantic books on Abyssinia, where he adventurously travelled in districts from which whites formerly had not returned alive. Commander Watts was hastening from Italy to rejoin his wife, who recently gavo birth to a second son.

An airline company official states that Pilot Vanderveist, when crossing the frontier of Switzerland, encountered a fog and asked for a bearing from Milan 15 minutes before the crash. He then wound in his aerial owing to a thunderstorm. He came out of the clouds and found himself too near the ground. He therefore attempted to climb up through the clouds and collided with the mountainside. The villagers at San Bernardino state that the plane crashed into a pine forest clothing a deep ravine with such violence that debris flung up by the propeller was later found embedded in a tree 50 yards distant. The rescuers rushed to the spot and found all dead, but Mademoiselle Hermanides, the first of the four stewardesses recently engaged, who was making her first trip from Holland. She was hastily extricated, but died in a few minutes. THE HAGUE, July 20. (Received July 21, at 8 p.m.) The public are deeply shocked at the third disaster in a week. The airline company announces-, the suspension of the Milan service until the cause of the disaster is established. It will be operated by Lufthansa. Commander Arthur Watts, D. 5.0., was educated at Dulwich College and studied at Antwerp, Paris and Slade School, London; contributor of humorous drawings to Punch, Life, etc.; served R.N.V.R., November, 1914, to January, 1919 (despatches); Zeebrugge raid, April 23, January, 1918 (D. 5.0.); at sinking of Vindictive, Ostend Harbour, May 10, 1918. Publication: "A Painter's Anthology."