COLLISION IN THE AIR

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1930, Page 13

COLLISION IN THE AIR

SANTA MONICA' TRAGEDY. NARRATIVES OF EYE WITNESSES. A incssage from Santa Monica, California, says the bodies of three of the ten men who were killed when two aeroplanes carrying’ photographers engaged in filming a picture collided in mid-air and fell into the sea, have been recovered. The other seven lie in the tangled wreckage in water about 2000 ft deep. A technical director who was in a third machine and a cameraman who was in a speedboat give graphic descriptions of the horrifying spectacle as the blazing ’planes hurled through the air. The man who was thought to be risking his life in the undertaking was the “double” for Warner Baxter, a noted movie actor, but he was in the third ’plane and came out safe, not having been called upon to make his intended hazardous parachute leap. The picture being filmed was to have been called “Such Men Are Dangerous.” It was based on the death on Jply 5, 1928, of Captain Alfred Loewenstein, the millionaire Belgian financier, who disappeared from a transport ’plane over the English Channel. The parachute jumper was to have leapt into the ocean, and the other two were to have swooped down to photograph him as he fell and struck the water.

Warner Baxter’s “double,” Triedwasser, was just making ready for the parachute jump when the tragedy occurred. Triedwasser was poising for his jump, waiting for the word from the man, who, responsible for timing the leap, was watching the camera ’planes, when a thin cry wafted through the roar of the motors, “They’re crashing!” The pilot of the third ’plane, Colonel Roscoe Turner, 500 ft below the doomed machine, wheeled his ship .well into the clear before the shrieking fire-Streamer-ed wreckage plunged by. i “I, saw. the ’planes, one of which was settling, come together,” said White. “Their wing-tips touched, then the wings telescoped, and the cabins crushed together. There was an explosive flash, bodies hurled out, and the flaming, ships began to fall like plummets into the sea. No one could have lived in those ’planes before they struck the water. They were enveloped in fire, and fell apart as they struck the surface of the ocean. L. W. O’Connell, head photographer for Fox Films, for whom the picture was being made, was stationed in a speedboad under the ’planes, prepared to pick up Triedwasser after his jump. “It was all over in a minute,” he said. “I saw one of the camera ’planes swing toward the other. Their wingtips caught, and they swung to a headon collision. They burst into flames, and seemed to hang in mid-air for a moment. Then they plunged down, still locked together. They still were burning when they struck the water.” O’Connell hurried his boat to the spot, and picked up the bodies of three men— Gold, Wells and Frankel.