FLYING MARQUESS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20132, 12 June 1935, Page 2

FLYING MARQUESS

I NOT PERTURBED BY CRASH 111 lucky fashion the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava recently escaped serious injury as the result of an air crash which recalled a tragedy ci nearly five years ago, in which his father was killed. A private aeroplane in which the Marquess was a passenger crashed just after taking off at Berk Aerodrome, Le Touquet, and the pilot, Captain G, W. Ferguson, navigational instructor at the Air Woi’k School of Flying at Heston, was injured. The engine failed at a height of about 1000 ft, and the machine nose-dived into sand dunes. Realising that the aeroplane might catch fire, Lord Dufferin, although badly shaken, promptly dragged his companion out of the cockpit. A few hours after his narrow escape Loi*d Dufferin flew from Le Touquet to Croydon in another machine. On landing he remarked, “I am all right now except for a headache. The few bad seconds between the engine falling and hitting the ground I prefer not to remember. lam lucky to have escaped with a few cuts. Shall I give up flying after this? Of course not.” Lord Dufferin’s father was killed in an air crash at Meopham, Kent, in July, 1930, and news of the tragedy was communicated to the young man while he was on a flying honeymoon, j He had been married less than three weeks before to Miss Maureen Guinness. Besides the late Lord Dufferin, Viscountess Ednam, Sir Edward Ward and Mrs Leoffler were killed in the Meopham accident. They, too, were returning from Le Touquet.