Newspaper Article 2015 – Historians remember plane’s ‘dreadful’ fall

Historians remember plane’s ‘dreadful’ fall

By Brenda Vowden
[email protected]

TIME has not diminished the “dreadful” sound Nola McAulay heard when a plane crashed into a paddock on her parents’ farm during a midday flight on April 18, 1938.

More than 75 years later, Mrs McAulay (nee Treseder) and fellow amateur historian Mervyn Harper, who still live near the crash site in Crownthorpe, are wanting to keep the memory of this “forgotten story” alive.

“I can still hear it,” Mrs McAulay said. “Dad tore out and I saw bits and pieces falling down – it was over in a flash.”

Pilot Nellie Arnott, 47, a registered Plunket nurse from a Pakowhai farming family, and her younger brother, Roy [Rob], were killed instantly when the Hawke’s Bay and East Coast aero club’s unique light aircraft nosedived to the ground.

“It buried itself in the ground – it was like a bomb explosion site,” Mrs McAulay said.

Their mutilated bodies were extracted from the plane and buried at the Eskdale cemetery.

The Hornet Moth ZK-ACP was the only one of its kind in the country – the first of the De Havilland light aircraft to feature side-by-side seating.

She said hearing a plane overhead in 1938 was a rare event and it was normal practice to go outside and watch if one was heard – so there were several witnesses to the accident. One witness observed the right wing crumbling and the plane turning nose down before the “engine roared and the machine dived”.

An inquest would later suggest Arnott had possibly panicked after going into a cloud – “losing stability and control”.

“Today, it would be perceived as pilot error,” Mr Harper said.

Mrs McAulay did not get much of a chance to view any more of the crash site until days later, as she and her two siblings were ushered away by their father to a neighbour’s because their mother was attending a family wedding out of town at the time. One neighbour had a phone and, within an hour of the crash, Mrs McAulay remembers hearing planes from around the district landing in the paddock “They kept on coming for days.”

Unlike aviation events today, the wreckage from the Crownthorpe tragedy was never removed for inspection.

“It was bulldozed down a gully where it still lies – at family parties we would go and have a look at the site – it was the thing to do.”

Mrs McAulay and Mr Harper feel the event is of historical significance and want to refresh memories.

“People need to be reminded that it did happen.”

Photo captions –

FORGOTTEN EVENT: Mervyn Harper and Nola McAulay poring over accounts of a plane crash in Crownthorpe in 1938.
DOWN: The HB and East Coast Hornet ZK-ACP, which crashed in April 1938.