LACK OF EQUIPMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23083, 8 January 1937, Page 7

LACK OF EQUIPMENT

WEATHER REPORTS FOR PILOTS THE AIR FORCE DISASTER LONDON, Jan. 6. Amazing evidence was given at the inquest on the victims of the Air Force crashes on December \i. Witnesses stated that no stations of the Royal Air Force were equipped with instruments for blind landing, and on the fatal day the wireless station at Finningley was undergoing repairs, with the result that the planes could not get weather direction reports when lost in the fog. A verdict of accidental death, due to the abnormal weather conditions, was returned. Fog caused a disaster on December 12 to seven Heyford bombers, forming No. 102 Bombing Squadron, flying from Aldergrove to Finningley, Yorkshire, which only one machine reached.. Of the remainder, one crashed, with the loss of three lives, on a rifle range at Hebbenbridge, Yorkshire, where villagers found a dazed airman with a bleeding face and his tunic ablaze, stumbling through the mist. It was Pilot-sergeant Otter, who said he had lost his bearings Ice-coated wings caused the plar.e to strike a steep ascent while he was looking for a landing place. Villagers found the plane a mass of flames. Two of the occupants were already burned to death, and the third, mortally burned, died before he reached hospital. Two of the planes made forced landings in Cheshire, one safely, but the other tore through a hedge and two sets of iron railings, knocked down a telegraph pole, and then upended and buried its nose in the ground. The three occupants had a narrow escape. The fifth, like its companions, lost direction, and circled above Oldham. When engine trouble developed the four occupants parachuted safely, except for the pilot, who broke a leg, and the plane came down in flames. The remaining two made forced landings in other districts.