CRASH IN JUNGLE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1935, Page 5

CRASH IN JUNGLE

AIRMAN’S LUCKY ESCAPE. PLANE HITS TREE TOPS. Sydney, Dec. 28. Pilot Donald Crisp, of W. R. Carpenter and Co.’s air, service in New Guinea, had a marvellous escape when he crashed in the jungle. Crisp was posted missing between Salamoa and Wau in a Fox Moth aeroplane. All available aeroplanes were mustered into a searching fleet. Flying low over a thickly-wooded slope, a rescue pilot saw the smashed machine, but could not locate the missing airman. A land party left immediately to bring Crisp to safety. As he was a newcomer to the country he would have had little hope of finding his way out of the forests alone. The searchers had to hack a path through the forest to reach the wrecked machine. They fought forward through tangled undergrowth and heavy timber at half a mile an hour. Crisp was found uninjured except for some bruises. He said that he ran into a severe thunderstorm, and owing to the heavy clouds on the mountains he mistook a narrow gorge for the Bito Gap. It was so narrow that the aeroplane would not rise, and he crashed on the tree tops. He extricated himself from the wreckage, walked to an open space, and made smoke signals. When an aeroplane appeared overhead, he decided to stay near the wrecked machine, expecting that a rescue party would be sent from Wau. Crisp’s adventure is an example ot the dangers faced by the New Guinea airmen, mostly Australians, who have done so much to open up that country in the last ten years. A recent flying visitor to New Guinea was wrd Sempill the famous British aviator, and he warmly praised the air service there. Technical staffs and pilots, he said, did gallant work. Aerodromes were smab, and all were built on substantial slopes. In fact, there was hardly one aerodrome in Papua or the Mandated Territory which would not be condemned instantly in Europe; but the services had operated successfully and with a minimum of accidents, for almost a decade. Natiw* who would possibly be terrified at the sight of a railway train or an ommbu* were quite familiar with aeroplanes.