MUTILATED BODIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 279, 26 November 1945, Page 5

MUTILATED BODIES

CREW AND PASSENGERS OF CRASHED PLANE Recd. 6 p.m. Batavia, Nov. 24. A search party to-day found the horribly mutilated bodies of four of the R A.F. crew and 20 British and Indian soldier passengers of a Dakota which crash-landed near Batavia. The Dakota was flying reinforcements to Semarang when bad weather forced it back. The engine failed and the plane crashlanded in a paddjr field six miles from Batavia, says the Associated Press. Aircraft were sent out 1° search on Friday and reported they had seen the half-burnt fuselage of the Dakota with hordes of Indonesians around it. A search party the same day found no trace of the occupants, but a further search party to-day located the bodies of the missing men, with their heads, arms and legs cut off. floating in a stream. There was no sign of any fi'ffit near the scene of the crash, although the troops had been fully equipped.

A brigadier commanding the search partv said apparently the men scrambled out of the plane without being able to get their guns. He immediately gave orders to set fire to all kampongs (native villages) in the immediate vicinity in retaliation.

Reed. 10 p.m. Batavia, Nov. 25. A British military spokesman giving further details of the massacre and mutilation of the crew and passenger?, of the crashed Dakota, said a search party encountered fire from a nearby village, whose inhabitants obviously were concerned in the fate of the missing men. One hundred Indonesians then attacked the search party, who inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers and burned the village to the ground. They took fifteen prisoners, some of whom were in posse • of British equipment. The spokesman said it was definite that at least five R.A.F. personnel and 2ft Indian soldiers from the. crashed nlane survived the landing. a 5; reconnaissance nlancs saw them after the crash standing watchin*’ the burning plane.