AEROPLANE ACCIDENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23599, 8 September 1938, Page 12

AEROPLANE ACCIDENT

TWO VICTIMS OF R.A.F. CRASH (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, Aug. 18. , Lieutenant Edward J. Boyle, of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, a flying officer of the Royal Air Force, and Dr William D. Walker were killed in an air accident near Richmond, Yorks, on August 16. According to an Air Ministry announcement, they were in an aircraft of No. 26 (Army Co-operation) Squadron, Catterick. with Lieutenant Boyle as the pilot. Flying-officer Boyle was the younger son of the late Captain the Hon. James Boyle and Viscountess Trenchard, and a stepson of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Viscount Trenchard He was 26 years of age. His father. Captain the Hon. James Boyle, who was the third son of the late Earl of Glasgow, married in 1908 Katherine, now Viscountess Trenchard, a daughter of the late Edward Salvin Bowlby. of Gilston Psrk Herts. At the outbreak of the Great War Captain Boyle went to France with his regiment, the Royal Scots Fusiliers. In October, 1914, he was killed in action. It was in 1920 that his widow married Viscount Trenchard. Captain Boyle left two sons and one daughter The elder son is Lieutenant Patrick John Salvin Bovle of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The younger. Flying-officer Boyle, joined the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, but in 1936 became a temporary flying officer of the R.A.F He was a nephew of Air Commodore the Hon. J. D Boyle. Captain the Hon Alan R. Boyle. Lady Augusta Inskip, Lady Alice Fergusson. and the Dowager Countess of Cranbrook Dr Walker held an Australian degree. havmg studied at Adelaide, where he graduated in 1925. He was formerly house surgeon and house physician at Adelaide General Hospital and then came to London, where he was at Holloway Hospital for a time Previously he served with the Australian R.A.M.C.

EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNT An eye-witness account of what occurred was given to the Yorkshire Post by Mr Robert Dixon, engaged on a farm. He loft the stables a few minutes after noon, and heard a plane aloft. Glancing upwards, he saw the plane In flight: soon after, it stopped in the air.

“ The propeller stopped revolving, and I'could distinctly see the blades, he said. “ The plane suddenly nosedived earthwards, and did two spins, when it dropped out of my sigh* behind a clump of trees. I shouted U a chauffeur on the estate and to a horseman, and we ran to the spot where the plane had apparently dropped. It was about 400 yards from ihe stables in the middle of a cornfield. When we arrived the plane was smashed into thousands of pieces. Only the engine appeared intact, but the whole of the debris was scattered In •in area of about 20 feet square. The two bodies were in the middle of the debris. We could see that both men were dead, as their bodies were so terribly smashed.” The weather was fine, and the plane, when he first saw it. would be about 400 feet high.