DISTANCE PLANE’S CRASH

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1929, Page 11

DISTANCE PLANE’S CRASH

TASK OF RECOVERING BODIES LONE HORSEMAN FOUND WRECK. KING SENDS MESSAGE OF REGRET TECHNICAL ADVISER TO REPORT. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Rec. 5.5 p.m., London, Dec. 19. There is still no connected story of the Royal Air Force disaster in which Squadron-Leader Jones-Williams and Flight-Lieutenant Jenkins were killed in their attempt to win for Britain the long distance flight record. Their Fairey-Napier monoplane crashed in the mountains near Tunis. French officials express the opinion that tlie airmen lost their way in the storm and were making for one of the few patches of open ground when they were sucked down by mountain currents and ran into the side of the Ejebelvit Mountain, 2500 feet high. A lonely horseman saw the wreckage at dawn and thought the airmen might be still alive. He tried to extricate them but saw they were dead. The preliminary commission of inquiry found the watch from an instrument on board. It fiad stopped at 9.4 p.m. Squadron-Leader Jones-Williams and Flight-Lieutenant Jenkins were brought to Tunis this afternoon aboard a military aeroplane. : French soldiers'stood on guard all night by the bodies. Sometimes Hie bodies had to be lowered by ropes in order to • traverse the narrow, rocky paths. At other , times they swung in rough cradles on the shoulders of gigantic Soudanese riflemen. . Mr. F. Montague, Under-Secretary for Air, stated in the House of Commons that he was not yet in a position to add materially to the information published about the disaster, Gtatee a British Official Wireless message. CRASHED IN THE HILLS. The reports so far received from the British Consul-General at Tunis stated that the machine crashed in the hills 30 miles south of Tunis. A military aiiard had been placed over the machine, and the Consul-General left at -dawn this morning for the scene. of the accident with a view to obtaining the fullest possible information. The Ministry had already dispatched a technical adviser- v to Tunis in order that the fullest expert inquiry practicable might be made on the spot. Pending the receipt of a report from the technical adviser no cause could be assigned for the accident. Mr. Montague added that responsible French authorities had given the greatest possible assistance. He was sure that the whole House would join with him in deploring the Joss of the lives of two gallant officers of such outstandin<r promise, and in conveying to their relatives an expression of the most profound sympathy. It is stated at the Air Ministry that, white a representative of the Ministry has already left for Tunis to .investigate the cause of the disaster, it is not likely that a formal service court of inquiry will be held in view of the special circumstances in which the disaster occurred. In regard to the removal of the machine and engine, no decision can be taken until further details are received.

Among British air experts the view is expressed that the disaster .occurred gome time before 8 o’clock on Tuesday evening. This calculation is based on the facts that the airmen reported their positipn by wireless at 4 o’clock, when they were 60 miles off Sardinia, and should' have sent out another message four hours later. They crashed before the four hours' had elapsed, but meanwhile had covered 4QO miles. Darkness would have fallen before 8 o’clock, and all the circumstances pointed to the' machine getting off its course in the storm and crashing into the mountains without the pilots being able to see the high ground in front of them. The King has sent the following message to Lord Thomson, Secretary for Air: “It is with much regret that I learned of the disaster to the monoplane near Tunis resulting in the death of the two pilots, Squadron-Leader JonesWilliams and Flight-Lieutenant Jenkins, and I join with the Royal Air Force in mourning the loss of two distinguished and gallant officers. Please convey to their families my sincere sympathy.”