FOR years Mr Ian Ross (83) of Myrtleville, near Goulburn NSW, has been trying to solve the mystery of an aircraft that flew low over his head when he was a small boy. He later heard it had crashed near Sydney and that there had been a sick person on board going to hospital.
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After the accident somebody in his family had retained a newspaper clipping of it but that had subsequently gone missing in later years.
Ian, then about seven-years-old, remembers first hearing the engine noise about 7pm and running to an ant hill in his back yard to watch it come over.
Then being frightened as it passed so low, “looked like it would hit the chimney”, that he ran back to his mother.
Ian contacted Leon Oberg, a Goulburn historian and journalist, who in turn put him in touch with me, a military and aviation historian in Canberra.
As the RAAF Historical Officer with Defence for 15 years I faintly remembered a similar question arising decades ago when working there.
The important clues remembered by Ian Ross were that it was a high wing monoplane, unusual in those days, it crashed near Cordeaux Dam near Sydney and the aircraft appeared flying approximately west to east over their home at about 50 feet.
Mr Ross phoned me on Sunday morning 15 January and with a bit of luck and some intuition we had solved the 75 year old mystery in thirty minutes.
In fact there was another witness to the aircraft between Goulburn and Taralga at a place called Newfoundland, eight miles east of Taralga and 10 miles north east of Myrtleville.
It was a Mr J.B. Connor who said it circled his place two or three times at 7.10pm so he and his family had quickly lit fires of paper and twigs to help guide it down to a safe landing place.
However, it had resumed its course east.
A Herald newspaper correspondent, living at Taralga at the time, recorded these details for his Sydney paper on Friday the February 21.
The aircraft is now identified as a twin-engine high wing Gannet that was operated by Western and Southern Provincial Airlines of Sydney (WASP), usually between Broken Hill and Sydney.
The accident occurred on Wednesday, February 19, 1936 at about 7.45pm.
Around Cordeaux Dam, near Picton and 40 miles (60 kms) from Sydney, it had crashed through “twenty treetops” in densely wooded country, four miles from Cordeaux Dam. Before hitting the ground and bursting into flame.
Killed was the pilot Jack Small (27), as well as four passengers on board.
Residents at Cordeaux Dam and employees of the Water Board at the settlement heard the crash and saw the flames.
They said it was almost totally dark at the time and they first heard the plane’s engines spluttering and stop.
Then one started for a few seconds again, then silence before it impacted.
At no time did they see the aircraft.
One of the search teams, with Brother Cutcliffe and three journalists of which two were from the Herald, found it the following morning at 5.55am. It was 800 feet above the Cordeaux River and had narrowly missing a sandstone pinnacle, surmounted a low sandstone cliff then struck a 12 inch (30 cm) thick tree some sixty feet above the ground, shearing off its left wing and crashing.
One fuel tank had burst into flame immediately with the other later on.
A partially burnt parachute was found nearby.
One passenger was Oliver King of Leeton who on the Tuesday had been tethering a cow and while driving a pike into the ground with a piece of wood had received a splinter in his right eye.
King then was going to Sydney for specialist eye treatment and was the person Mr Ross remembers from reports at the time.
Mr Wilfred Kingsford-Smith, the manager for WASP Airlines, said that their Codock aircraft, an earlier version of the Gannet, had developed serious engine trouble on the Leeton – Sydney flight and had set down at Young for repairs.
Because of the urgency of the flight with an eye-damaged passenger the Tugan had been quickly sent down from Mascot to pick up the stranded passengers.
Kingsford-Smith also praised pilot Small: “Nothing was ever a bother to him.
“He was always willing to do good turns for others and was a most agreeable chap.
“He was one of the finest pilots in Australia”.
The other three passengers on the Gannet, which was registered VH-UUZ, were Mr A.V. Sinfield, 24, a Sydney accountant, Mr C.B. Turner, 21, also a Sydney accountant and Mr Frank. L. Eagle, 40, a merchant from Lane Cove.
The distance from Young to Taralga, near to where Mr Ross lived, is about 80 nautical miles (50 minutes flying time) and from there to Cordeaux Dam via the Hume Highway, a further 55 nautical miles (35 minutes).
The Gannet, or Codock as the civil and first version was called in 1932, was a very interesting aircraft for its time and an Australian design by Sir Lawrence Wackett.
The RAAF operated a number of them, as did some civilian airlines pre-war and during 1939-45.
Fitted with two 200 horsepower Gipsy Six engines on top of their wings they had a top speed of around 150 mph and cruised at 130.
They could carry a load of up to a ton, seat six or seven passengers as a small airliner and had wooden wings covered by plywood with a welded tube frame with fabric exterior.
The first Codock Javelin was actually designed and built at Cockatoo Dockyards in Melbourne around 1932, possibly by the RAAF Experimental Station, and derived its name from that site using part of both words to form “Codock”.
The early model also had two Napier Javelin Mk III engines of 150 horsepower at 2000 revolutions.
>From here it progressed to the upgraded Gannet in 1935 being built in Sydney, like VH-UUV, and then taken over by the fledgling Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation for the wartime models with the larger engines.
In fact the Codock and more so the Gannet were quite a modern little airliner for their time but would have been a far superior and more durable aircraft if built in aluminium. The twin engines located close to the top of the fuselage and inboard meant it could fly on one engine and maintaining a close centreline thrust would be easily held in that configuration.
It is possible the Gannet that crashed near Sydney in 1936 may have encountered strong head winds after Young and lost height or simply hit the tree tops in poor weather while low flying into Sydney.
Certainly Ian Ross remembers it low flying even as far back as his family property near Goulburn and hedge hopping over the hills towards the Hume Highway.
One of the pilots involved in the search for the Gannet, H.C. Durant in a Gypsy Moth, said that Captain Small had probably run into a storm with strong headwinds and that he had throttled off in order to glide down with the intention of coming below the low ceiling and the very bad visibility and while manoeuvring he actually struck the hillside.
Durant had flown the course in another plane the same day and descended and encountered a “pea soup fog”.
He had then flown across to Bulli near Wollongong, descended over the sea and followed the coast up to Sydney at 10 to 15 feet above the water.
It is the writer’s opinion that in fact Small in the Gannet was attempting the same route as Durant.
A latter day straight line flight plan from Young through to the Taralga area shows a destination near Wollongong and Cordeaux Dam. If this is correct then Small had descended a few minutes too early and just five miles short.
A bit further on travelling east and he would have been over the sea, a safe descent and a ninety degree turn left up to Sydney. Probably arriving at 8pm., his intended arrival time.
A poem provided to the writer many years ago by well-known photographer and fisherman, ex Sgt Did Gadsby, an RAAF photogragher who flew in Gannets during World War II, is expressed in the following words:
The Gannet (Anonymous).
The Gannet is a wonderful bird
That flits across the sky
And anyone who sees it says
My goodness, how does it fly.
Historic 8 mm film of VH-UUV being flight tested in October 1935 at Mascot airport is available for the enthusiasts to view on You Tube. It runs for two minutes and was filmed by Gwen Carpenter, the mother of one of the men who first built the Tugan Gannet.