SWEPT TO DEATH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20280, 14 April 1934, Page 29 (Supplement)

SWEPT TO DEATH.

Mates on Derelict Plane Helpless. paralysed by cold. (Special to flic “ Star.”) SAN FRANCISCO, March 11, After a five-hour struggle against death, two Army flyers who survived an aeroplane disaster off the coast, near New York, told a story of the terrible death of a comrade, and of their own long ordeal. Rcseuors found the two men clinging with numbed lingers to their partially submerged aeroplane and paralysed by long exposure. A quarter of an hour earlier they had heard their delirious comrade's calls for help, and had seen him swept to his death in the icy water. As. they lay propped up in a naval hospital they narrated their experiences. “We were over the water, two miles off Coney Inland, when we experienced our first difficulty,” one said. “We fell into the ocean about 2.30 in the afternoon. Our motors were cut out. When we hit the water one of the motors broke away. But we were not awfully worried at first. We drifted about for an hour. A police ’plane came alongside. It was like a cheque from home. But they could not get us. We wondered and waited as the police ’plane taxied away. We had shouted to them, ‘We’re O.K. Get us a boat.’ ” The aviators learned after their rescue that the police craft had been forced down and taxied perilously to shore. Efforts to Attract Help. “We burned all our smoke candles,** they said, “trying to attract help. The water was coming in. We closed the door between the cockpit and the cabin but that didn’t do much good.” Then, they said, they chopped away the other motor to lighten the ’plane. The tail was higher than any other parr of the ship, so they climbed back on the tail, and it started to go down rapidly under their weight. They made a dive for the top wing, and lay there on the wing until about the time the sun went down. They were drifting seaward all the time. “Our faces were coated with ice,” they continued. “We had no feeling whatever in our legs. They were numb and heavy. We had swallowed plenty of water and we were pretty weak. Lieutenant IveDermott was all in. He was almost paralysed. We had been buddies ever since we started studying at Kelly Field. There wa« one song we would always sing together, ‘Dear Old Girl.* We learned it one night in Jacksonville. So 1 started off ‘Dear Old Girl,’ and I can see McDermott now as he joined Swept Overboard. McDermott was swept overboard while trying to change his position. He grabbed the tail, and finally his companions pulled him back on the wing. “He was delirious now, and too paralysed to hold on. He kept asking, ‘Why doesn’t the boat come?* We were too paralysed to help him, and a wave sent him off. We couldn’t do anything about it We clung to the wing, and saw a boat about 100 feet away. We shouted and shouted. It seemed they would never find us—and was it cold ? Wo .were pretty well encased in ice by. this time. That, boat was about 25 feet away when they threw us a line. They caine alongside and took us aboard. They treated us fine.” Both aviators who survived suffered from exposure and severe skin abrasions.