CRASH OF FRENCH AIR LINER

Taranaki Daily News, 1 May 1933, Page 7

CRASH OF FRENCH AIR LINER

TERRIBLE ORDEAL. SLOW DEATHS FROM EXPOSURE. By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Rsc. 6.30 p.m. Rome, April 29. The police and Fascisti, searching the Appennines, have found the French commercial air liner bound from Indo-China to Marseilles, which had been missing since Sunday. It had crashed in a snowcovered forest 5000 feet above Sosenza. Five of the occupants, including the pilot and wireless operator, were dead, but three were alive, including a woman passenger. J The survivors lived six days in the back portion, of the cabin, which was intact, subsisting on chocolate biscuits. ‘The plane crashed in the trees during a fog and the survivors’ escape was due to the branches breaking the force of the crash. ■ ‘ The survivors, all of whom are suffering from nervous prostration, relate terrible stories of the sufferings of the dead and the passengers who were injured, pinned beneath the wreckage in deep snow when the plane overturned. The mechanic was practically incapacitated with his injuries. Eteve Gigaudent made strenuous but unavailing efforts to lift the solid mass of wreckage and to light flares to attract, help at night , time. Huddled in the cabin and tortured with the piteous cries of the sufferers beneath, which were so heai-trending the survivors fled from the wreckage at daybreak, only to be driven back by cold and hunger on the second day. Gradually the cries of the imprisoned passengers grew fainter as they succumbed to cold and exhaustion. Eteve attributes his escape to changing seats with a dead passenger in order to give the latter a view of the scenery.