AIR LINER SAVED

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20926, 4 January 1938, Page 2

AIR LINER SAVED

CAPTAIN ACTS QUICKLY Presence of mind on the part of Captain A. B. Youell, of the Imperial Airways liner Horatius, prevented a disaster while over mid-Channel on the way from Le Bourget. Twenty-one passengers, including Miss Ellen Wilkinson, M.P., on her way back from Madrid, were not frightened and merely laughed when a man reached for his hat and found the metal frame of the aircraft had become heavily charged with static electricity. As they were approaching a black cloud Captain Youell ordered the wireless operator to wind in the aerial. An explosion occured in the heart of the cloud three minutes later, and as the electricity was discharged from the ship through the port plane the Horatius rapidly lost height. Miss Katheryn Applegate, a passenger, said: “My first thought was that we all have to die once, and my second was for my newly-purchased Paris hat.” Captain Youell said after his arrival at Lympne: “If the aerial had been out, we wouldn’t be here.” The explosion burned a two-feet rent in one wing and burst out the radio apparatus. Tire Horatius yesterday created a record, conveying its 250,000 th passenger across the Channel.