Hurtled From Plane

[Dave Homewood]

HURTLED FROM PLANE

HEAVY LUMP OF LEAD

OC. PALMERSTON N., This Day.

When a lump of lead weighing 15lb fell from an aeroplane passing over Palmerston North on Wednesday afternoon into the garden of a house in Savage Crescent it buried itself three feet in the ground, the impact shaking nearby houses so that the inmates thought there had been an earthquake. One lady saw the metal come hurtling through the air towards her, and when it landed in the garden it threw earth over a radius of three yards. The police were informed, because the lead had buried itself out of sight and nobody knew what it was. There were fears that it might be an unexploded bomb. Air Force personnel arrived and excavated. The lead was in the nature of a compensating weight.


EVENING POST,  12 JANUARY 1945

[thomarse]

That would have been exciting!

It's a wonder wartime censorship allowed this to be published?

[Dave Homewood]

I assume it was a weight that they put into an empty cockpit of a biplane?

[markrogers]

I just wonder what aircraft it fell out from! It was fortunate that no one was hurt.

[angelsonefive]

Didn't the Harvard have weights attached to the outside of the rear fuselage for solo flight ?
'Solo Weights' I think they were called.

[bevanid]

Harvard had a bar that went through the rear fuselage with a round roughly 10lb lead weight on each side, mounted on the outside of the fuselage when the aircraft was being flown solo.

I have a solo bar and one weight here for NZ1044,