“Airman Was Very Drunk At Time Of His Death.”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18805, 6 July 1929, Page 2

“Airman Was Very Drunk At Time Of His Death.”

SENSATION CAUSED BY OFFICIAL STATEMENT CONCERNING LAST FLIGHT OF WILMER STULTZ.

(United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. j (Received July 6,2 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 5. A SENSATION has been caused by an official announcement by the City Toxicologist, Dr Goettlcr, that Wilmer Stultz was “ very drunk at the time of his death.” The dead airman has already been declared responsible for the crash. The authorities will discharge all pilots found drinking.—Australian Press Association.

A message on July 1 said: At Roosevelt Flying Field, New York, Wilmer Stultz, the well-known American anman who piloted Miss Amelia Earhart across the Atlantic, was killed in a spectacular crash, with two companions, when a biplane, in which Stultz was pilot, rose with the intention of stunting. The machine went into a tail spin at 200 ft, and spun down at breakneck speed, striking the ground with a terrific noise and barely' missing

a motor truck, in which two men were sitting. Stultz’s companions were killed instantly, and Stultz died in hospi* tgl immedi £ tely afterwards . Wilmer Stultz won international fame with his trans-Atlantic flight of June 16 and 17, 1928, when he piloted the tri-motored Fokker monoplane Friendship. The journey' was chiefly notable as the first occasion on which a woman crossed the Atlantic by air, the passenger being the amateur aviatrix Miss Amelia Earhart.