TEN LIVES LOST.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12537, 2 January 1934, Page 5

TEN LIVES LOST.

BIG PLANE CRASHES. MACHINE HITS WIRELESS TOWER. - United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyri gh t. LONDON, December 31. Imperial Airways’ liner Appollo, travelling to London from Brussells, crashed at Ruysselede between Ostend and Bruges and its eight passengers, pilot and wireless operator were killed. The Appollo left Brussels at 12.20 and crashed in a fog. It caught fire, its occupants being burned to death. The Appollo was flying at 900 feet. It is believed. that the pilot was seeking a landing place owing to the fog, and struck a wireless mast. The ’piane caught fire.

Employees at the wireless station were beaten back by the flames. There was no cry from the wreckage. It is believed that all the occupants were killed before they were burned. They are still in the tangled debris, being left till the Belgian authorities’ technical examtion.

The dead are: Captain J. Gittens (pilot), Flying-Engineer H. G. Lock, four Britons and four foreigners. The latter include Louis Grem, a. brother of the author, J. T. Grein. The only woman killed was Desmond, a Londoner reuL^Jing from a visit to friends. The Appollo, a tliree-engined Avro, was formerly used in India by Ford M lllingdon. Imperial Airways state that the Appollo did not hit the pylon, but collided with the aerial wires, breaking off a wheel and the undercarriage. It then struck other wires, losing portion of a wing. At Ruysselede the commission investigating the disaster opened. The bodies were identified and placed in coffins and removed to the offices of the wireless administration pending their removal by relatives on January 2. Experts consider that ice-laden wings contributed to the disaster, forcing down the aeroplane. Owing to the damaged installation, wireless messages could not be transmitted to Xew York, Buenos Aires and Beirut.

A man who rushed to the rescue when the "plane crashed, succeeded i n . tearing a hole in the canvas, but within the ’plane found only a confused mass of bodies. Only one person appeared still living, an elderly man. with white hair. His face was bleeding and his eyes starting with terror. Frantic efforts were made to extricate him, but it was too late and the ’plane flared like a torch.