Airliner’s tailplane aflame in flight
People in Winton,north-west Queensland,said yesterday the tailplane of the crashing Ansett-ANA Viscount VH-RMI airliner was shrouded in flames before the aircraft plunged to the ground.
The Ansett-ANA Viscount VH-RMI that crashed in north-west Queensland in 1966.Supplied
All 20 passengers and crew of four were killed in the crash,which was the third worst in Australian aviation history.
Earlier,Captain Ken Cooper,the pilot of the Viscount radioed Brisbane tower that he had an engine fire,and said he was going to make an emergency landing at Winton.
The aircraft had taken off from Mt. Isa at 12.50 pm on a scheduled flight to Brisbane,and was due to land at Longreach at 1.30 pm to pick up passengers. It crashed at 1.50 pm.
The airliner crashed in scrub country on Nadjyamba Station,12 miles west of Winton and two miles south of the Winton Boulia beef road.
Wreckage from the shattered plane was scattered over an area half a mile square and was still burning an hour after the crash.
Wreckage from the crash scene.Supplied
Victorians
The passengers included two Melbourne men,Mr T. J. Henty,an industrial psychologist who had been conducting a training course at Mt. lsa,and Mr A. Munro,of St. Kilda.
The dead also included Mrs Eileen Fisher,wife of the chairman of directors of Mt. Isa Mines,and her two little grandsons,who were returning to Brisbane after a holiday.
Captain Cooper,41,was a veteran Ansett pilot who joined the company in 1951 after wartime service in flying boats in the RAAF.
He had flown more than 14,300 hours,and had trained pilots of Viscount,Friendship,Convair and DC-3 aircraft. He was married with four children.
His first officer,John Gillam,29,joined the airline in January this year,after service with Ansett-MAL in Papua New Guinea.
Minister acts
The Minister for Civil Aviation (Mr. Swartz) announced the crash in the House of Representatives,and promised a full investigation would be made as soon as possible.
Mr Swartz left Canberra last night for the scene of the crash aboard a Department of Civil Aviation Friendship aircraft.
The aircraft had taken off from Melbourne earlier with 10 members of the department aboard to investigate the disaster. They were due in Winton at 1 am,and were to leave almost immediately for the wreckage.
The investigation group was headed by the assistant director-general (air safety),Mr D. S. Graham,and included the director of air safety investigation (Mr Frank Yeend),and the chief inspector of accidents (Mr L. M. Leslie)
Also aboard were technical investigators from Ansett-ANA.
Exploded
Father M. Lyons,the Winton Roman Catholic parish priest,said “I rushed out to the accident scene,but I saw immediately that everyone in the plane had perished.
“I think the aircraft exploded in the air.
“There was a little bit of gidyea scrub — not very high. If the plane had crash-landed this scrub would have been cut down. A track would have been left along the ground. There was no track.
“Bodies,engines,the tailplane,were over a wide area. It seemed obvious the plane exploded while still in the air.
“A light plane pilot told me he saw parts tumbling down from the air.”
“Terrible”
Winton’s Anglican rector (the Reverend John Beaverstock),who is a pilot and flies the Barcaldin-based diocesan light plane,was on the opposite side of town when the plane crashed.
“I rushed to the scene immediately,” he said. “It was a terrible sight.
“All I could do was give a general absolution on the spot”.
Mr Beaverstock said he had been shocked at the number of parents who took their children from Winton township to the crash while bodies still littered the area.
“This upset me,” he said. “It was a sight that shocked me,let alone children. It was something that could affect a child permanently.”