AEROPLANE TRAGEDY

Taranaki Daily News, 15 July 1929, Page 11

AEROPLANE TRAGEDY

NOSE-DIVE INTO PADDOCK.

A Moth aeroplane piloted by Mr, Oscar Thomas Walton, an instructor attached to the Bendigo Aero Club, and

having Mr. Arthur Weston, commercial traveller, of Bendigo, as a passenger, crashed into a field at Bendigo, Victoria, on July 3, and both men were killed. The plane was said to have nose-dived from a height of 2000 ft. after the pilot had given an exhibition of stunting. Walton, who was 119 years of ago, had arrived in Bendigo about six weoiks previously at tho instance of the Vic-

torian Aero Club, to instruct pupils in flying. He had obtained his pilot’s license at the end of last year. His people reside at St. Kilda. Weston, who was aged 35 years, was married, and lived at Bendigo. He intended to qualify for a pilot’s license.

Walton, accompanied by a friend, made a flight at the Bendigo Aerodrome early in the afternoon, and upon his return expressed a wish to make another Hight. Weston volunteered to accompany him. Spectators said that tho machine travelled about a mile and a-half in a northerly direction, and turned back for the aerodrome. After going a mile in the opposite direction, it returned and flew directly over the aerodrome nt a height of about 3000 ft. The pilot then began to indulge in trick flying. The machine did a side-roll three times, and entered a spiral spin, dropping about 1000 ft. The pilot then straightened the plane, but immediately seemed to lose control, and the machine nose-dived into a paddock a few hundred yards distant from tho aerodrome. Portion of the engine was embedded in the earth, and the ground was strewn with fragments of wreckage. Walton, still strapped to portion of the plane, was lying about 20ft. from the engine. He was moaning and unconscious. He died within a few minutes. The body of Weston was found under a shattered wing of tha machine.