FLYER’S CLOSE CALL.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19512, 10 June 1933, Page 17

FLYER’S CLOSE CALL.

FORCED LANDING. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON. June 8. A North American Newspaper Alliance special message says that Lieutenant Mattern telephoned from Belovo that he had been forced to land owing to gases damaging his stabiliser. He adds: “I left Omsk at 1.10 a.m. Four hours later I began to feel queer and then nausea, as I caught a real whiff of the fumes due to a leaky petrol pipe. There were only miles of trees below, and with my head spinning like a top, I tried tilting the plane to get fresh air. I was just wondering what was going to happen, when a saw a clear patch, and headed for it, fighting the fumes. I do not know how I landed. I found Russians employed at a workers’ settlement besieging the plane. I crawled out and collapsed. The workers took me to a hut and I lay in a bunk terribly sick. “Later I felt better and inspected the plane. I found I had made a lucky landing, striking the ground with the tail and cracking the stabiliser. The Russians sent mechanics from Novosibirsk and also a plane with enough steel to patch the plane. I shall make her fly to Krasnoyarsk, where she will be properly repaired.”