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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0521.PDF
-•'•••'• FLIGHT International, 5 April 1962 519 B U S S 1 PORT AND NESS New Zealand Visit BY PHILIP WILLS I TOOK off from London Airport at 3.15 p.m. on December 28, 1961. It had been freezing hard for days and I had just started one of my earth-shaking colds. The sun was setting in an icy and smoky haze. Kitty had to stay at home to cope with schools. 1 was off to New Zealand and Australia on a rushed business trip, with perhaps a little gliding on the side. It should have been a time of glad anticipation. I felt thick in the head and miserable as hell. In those latitudes the fleet 707 nearly kept up with the Sun, which had been about to set at London, and finally inched over the western horizon when we were over Newfoundland. It was still December 28, 1961 when, 18 hours later, we dropped wearily on to the runway at Honolulu. Here a merciful airline decrees a 24-hour stop to give the confused and weary passenger time to try and catch up with himself, to accustom himself to having break fast at dinner time and waking up when his whole being is insisting that it is time to go to bed. The attempt, though no doubt well meant, is a very partial success. At midnight on December 29 a small gaggle of somnambulists stalked into another merciless 707, and five hours later by the clock were decanted at Nandi, Fiji. It was December 31—the conjuring trick of the International Date Line had seen to it that in my personal calendar there will never appear the date of December 30, 1961. An hour later we were sitting, our eyes on stalks, in a TEAL Electra on the penultimate leg of our flight to Christchurch. A brisk New Zealand air hostess came by handing out the daily news papers. The first headline I saw—I found my neighbour giving me the disapproving stare of an Englishman who has caught one of his compatriots expressing emotion in a public place—ELDERLY GLIDER PILOT CRASHES ON MOUNTAIN . . . Matthew Wills, aged 61, was seriously injured yesterday when ..." Cousin Matthew—elderly my foot—great big burly Matthew. he may be 61 by the clock, but the clock, as I had recently been finding, can be a liar. But Matthew, with whom I was going to stay in his caravan at the gliding meeting at Omarama in the Mackenzie country near Mount Cook, had yesterday crashed in his Skylark 2 on top of a 5,000ft mountain. The Electra droned on at a miserly 400 m.p.h. towards New Zealand carrying one passen ger who felt very miserable indeed. At Christchurch 1 was met by Fred Dunn who told me the story. Matthew had been quite determined to attain the final leg of his Silver C before my arrival, by doing five hours on the mountain. This he certainly achieved, but not in the way he had intended. He had taken off on aero-tow at about 10 a.m. and near the top had become worried that he was being towed too near the mountain side for comfort. He had therefore pulled his glider away from it, but as he was still tied to the tug this had turned the aeroplane's nose further in towards the hazard. Too late the tug pilot had realized the dangers of the situation and had dropped his end of the rope. A moment later Matthew saw the mountain-top rush at him. He too pulled his release and a second later the crash came. There was a stiff breeze blowing up the mountain and the Skylark's airspeed indicator was found stuck registering 70 m.p.h. Flying downwind, the sailplane must have struck at nearly 100 m.p.h. This particular mountain is wickedly steep and ridged up to within a quarter of a mile of the summit, but for this last stretch is a gently rounded slope covered with rough, brown tussock grass. Matthew found himself dazed but miraculously conscious, lying with the splintered wreckage all round him. The wind was cold, but the clear New Zealand sun blazed down from the dazzling sky. His back and his ankle hurt pretty badly and he put his hand to his forehead and it came down wet, sticky and red. The straps had broken on impact, and he had been hurled through the Perspex canopy, which had shattered and gone some way to scalping him. He realized that something must be done if he was not to bleed to death; the central part of the fuselage was quite near and he man aged to crawl round it and drag out the first-aid kit. He got out the bandage and laboriously wound it vertically round his head and his jaw to hold his scalp in place. After release the tug pilot had landed back at Omarama, but, as soon as he had stopped his engine, the realization of what might have happened came to him. He rushed to the propeller, swung it again, took off and climbed full-throttle back to the point of re lease. He saw the wreckage and Matthew, seeing him, gave him a wave. The Tiger Moth streaked away out of sight. Now Matthew was attacked by a fierce thirst. After the blood he had lost, he realized the vital necessity of a drink. In the splin tered cockpit of the glider next to him was a bottle of lime-juice, but he was quite incapable of standing up to lean inside and get it. He picked up a piece of jagged wood under his hand and banged it against the plywood shell. At the second or third attempt it broke through with a crackling sound, and then occurred the second miracle of the day: the bottle of lime-juice lay inside the hole he had made, unbroken. He dragged it out and took a long drink. Now he had at best a long wait, so he managed to drag a spare coat out of the cockpit and painfully crawled under the remains of a wing, covered himself as well he could, and settled down to wait for rescue. A few minutes later the Tiger again buzzed over head, but could see no sign of Matthew or of life. Down in the gliding camp his friends had sprung to fierce action. New Zealanders know their mountains and they knew that it would require a major effort to beat time if they were to get their friend down to safety before nightfall. Bruce Gillies is fortunately one of the most experienced mountain rescuers in the South Island. All his instincts were to drop everything and lead a party in a wild dash up the mountain. All his training told him that he must stay at base and organize the others. He stayed, and in so doing undoubtedly saved Matthew's life. A first party of 20 men set off. It was impossible to make a straight attack up the west-facing slope because, from the gliding site, a steep ridge ran up to be interrupted by a chasm running athwart the mountain-face. So the party set off by Land Rover round the south-western flank and then took to the climb from that direction. Dr Ferner, carrying his bag, led the way. It is not every doctor who can climb a steep 5,000ft mountain in walking shoes and get first to the top, but Ferner did it, in 2£ hours. He found Matthew under the wing and in a couple of minutes realized he would have to be carried down. He diagnosed possibly a broken back, ankle and hip; he stitched up the forehead as well as he could. Prearranged signals were laid on the ground and seen by the hovering Tiger. Matthew is a big man—he must weigh over 16
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