REPAIR FEAT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 65, 17 March 1936, Page 8

REPAIR FEAT

UNDER BLAZING SUN HOW PLANE WRECK WAS PATCHED SYDNEY, Feb. 16. Four weeks ago, Captain Frank Neale, gazing al his badly-damaged Percival Gull monoplane in the blazing heat of a Centra] Australian sun, wondered moodily by what, means and w’hen, if ever, he would get it back to Sydney. Y&sterday he brought it down perfectly at Mascot after a 2300-mile flight, made in stages, from Tennant’s Creek. This is the story of how it was done:— The ’plane had been caught in the path of a willy-willy sweeping across the Tennant’s Creek aerodrome. It was torn from its moorings, lifted 30 feet into the, air and finally dumped nearly l‘j() feet away with the bodywork badlv damaged in nearly every vitol part. Another machine, a Hermes Spartan biplane belonging to Major E. G. Clerk, was lifted into the air, turned completely over and wrecked almost beyond repair. In the fave of every possible drawback. Captain Neale set out to repair his ’plane. Blacks’ Aid Firs-t, with the aid of a party oi blacks from the reserve close to the ’drome, he had the 'plane hauled in sections to the old telegraph station. There, with Mr. E. Martin (linesman) and Mr. W. Goad, he worked with the crudest of too's to make the machine once more airworthy. They rigged it on a tripod of mulga logs, and on an old anvil fashioned sleek plates when a ch’sel and mallet to strengthen the undercarriage. A pocket knife was used to ehape splices for the crushed longerons, and lying for days on his back in temperatures that never failed to soar well over the 100, Captain Neale sewed the torn fabric and made other repairs. He took off on a trial from a run way cleared by the blacks near the sta lion, and to show h's appreciation for their help took Charlie, the king of the Warramul’a tribe, and Mysi, cook at the telegraph station, for a short flight. On the subsequent flight to Alascot the ’plane functioned perfectly, Captain Neale bringing with him as a passenger Air. R. N. Hughes-Jones. At Alascot the ’plane will undergo * t'h-oroujjU overhaul.