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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 29, 2006 14:11:26 GMT 12
Here is an interesting article about air safety featuring D.M. allan (who incidentally about two years later while instructing for the RNZAF at Mangere was killed when he fell out of his Tiger Moth, after the seatbelt broke!)   |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 29, 2006 14:25:54 GMT 12
Oh and the date of the above was Sept 1st, 1938 in case you cannot read it.
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Post by Peter Lewis on Nov 29, 2006 15:29:50 GMT 12
Here is an interesting article about air safety featuring D.M. allan (who incidentally about two years later while instructing for the RNZAF at Mangere was killed when he fell out of his Tiger Moth, after the seatbelt broke!) Story as I heard it was that Dave Allen was instructing dual from the front cockpit of a Tiger. He told the student to perform a slow roll. When the aircraft became inverted in the course of this manouvre, the student pushed the stick forward to maintain level flight inverted. The front control coloumn had become entangled in the strap that held the locking pin in the front seat harness, and the foreward movement of the stick pulled the pin out of the four-point harness thus releasing the locking mechanisim and undoing the harness. All Tiger Moth sealtbelts were modified after this event to prevent a recurrance (and a loss of instructors). |
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 29, 2006 15:59:31 GMT 12
Yes, that's right. I was going from memory but those details are familiar, cheers.
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Post by Peter Lewis on Nov 29, 2006 18:54:53 GMT 12
Good to see some background info on Dave Allan, a lot of detail there I didn't know.
The pics of the Moth AAU must have been from a file even then - the aircraft was WFU as unserviceable 13Jun38, before the article was published.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 29, 2006 19:44:22 GMT 12
Yes, it is a great article with indeed more detail on Allen than I had read before. I thought the historians among us may find it as fascinating as I did. I'm glad it's been of interest.
The New Zealand Observer was an amazing resource of articles, as was the Auckland Weekly News. Sadly both collections on microfilm in the Waikato Uni library stopped before the war. I'd have liked to have read the Observer's take on the war. That collection in the library goes from about 1880 to 1939. And it was a magazine not afraid to say what it thought about politicians. I'd always got the impression from documentaries and books, etc that the Savage government was seen as glorious, saving the common man and doing no wrong with it's benevolent state. However there are some really cutting satires and coolumns on that government, some more sharp than today's cartoonists and the like.
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