“NO USE MAKING GUESSES”

Southland Times, Issue 23407, 14 January 1938, Page 7

“NO USE MAKING GUESSES”

ORIGIN OF FIRE AND EXPLOSION FLAGS AT HALF-MAST AT AUCKLAND (United Press Association) AUCKLAND, January 13. Official advice of the fate which has overtaken the Samoan Clipper and her crew was contained in a cablegram received this afternoon from Pan-Ameri-can Airways in San Francisco, by Mr Harold Gatty, special representative of the company in New Zealand. The cablegram briefly stated that the clipper had been destroyed in flight by a fire the origin of which could not be determined. All the members of the crew were dead. Future developments would be communicated to Auckland in due course. As soon as the official notification was received from San Francisco the United States and New Zealand flags, which are normally flown only when aircraft are in port, were run up half-mast on the Pan-American airport buildings in Mechanic’s Bay. For the last two or three years Mr Gatty has not spared himself in his efforts to organize the full commercial development of the air service down the Pacific and naturally the disaster has come as a great blow to him personally. It has been heightened by the fact that Captain Musick, in particular, was one of his personal friends with whom he had flown down the Pacific on the return survey flight to Honolulu in April of last year. “It is no use making guesses as to what happened on board the clipper,” Mr Gatty said. “Any one of a number of things might have caused the fire and the explosion in mid-air, but it would be idle to speculate as to the exact origin.

“To myself and to countless others,” Mr Gatty continued, “the loss of the clipper is a tragedy. There were men on board who had pioneered air transport over long stretches of ocean, and to me it seems that the whole science of aviation can ill afford their' passing. NEAR MECHANICAL PERFECTION “Some consolation can be drawn from the fact that there were no passengers on board the clipper. The loss of passengers would have been even more tragic. As it is those who manned the flying-boat knew that their craft was as near mechanical perfection as possible and that the organization behind their flight was thorough to the last word.

“What happened to the flying-boat can happen to any piece of mechanism, no matter how perfectly it has been constructed,” Mr Gatty added. “An expert driver may be driving a mechanically perfect car, but a fault can develop, which may mean destruction. We have not yet developed machinery which can give warning that it is likely to go wrong.” The loss of the clipper, Mr Gatty said, could not be taken in any way as an indication that the air route between Honolulu and Auckland was commercially impracticable. Tragic as it was, it was merely one of those ex-

periences which befel most companies engaged in transport, whether by road, rail, sea, or air. Against the loss of the clipper could be set the fact that the company’s flying-boats had flown more than 1,000,009 miles on the North Pacific route in two years without a single mishap.