New Zealand

At 1117LT flight 92 departed Wellington Airport on a scheduled flight to Rotorua. The flight cleared Wellington Control Zone and later reported its position at Foxton and east of Ohakea. No further messages ware received from the aircraft, and no distress calls were heard. At 1155LT the aircraft was sighted over the northeast slopes of Mount Ruapehu. A few seconds later the starboard wing, complete with engine, separated from the fuselage. As the rest of the structure plunged towards the ground an explosion occurred, and the fuselage burst into flames. The aircraft crashed on the face of the mountain, and the pilot and five passengers died instantly. The accident occurred at an altitude of 7 300 ft amsl, 1 276 yd from Te Heu Heu Peak.
Crew:
Cpt Alf Bartlett, pilot.
Passengers:
Marlene Boynton,
Nicholas Crook 2 children
Irvine Down.

The pilot was a former member of the Royal Canadian Air Force where he had logged 1,260 hours flying in both single and multi-engined aircraft. He had come to New Zealand with the intention of working as an agricultural pilot. He had been employed by James Aviation as a trainee topdressing pilot and had completed 22 hours of supervised productive flying at the time of his death. His total flying in the FU24 was 31 hours. At 1315 on the day of the accident he took over ZK-BOB from another trainee, making three satisfactory sorties without incident and then departed on a fourth. Shortly afterwards the absence of engine noise was noticed by those on the airstrip and the supervising instructor took off immediately on an aerial search and located ZK-BOB, crashed and burning, about 400 metres outside the sowing area. The crash site was 92 metres below the level of the area being topdressed. The plane had cartwheeled, rotating about its normal axis and finishing up 12 metres beyond a decapitated pine sapling. The port outer wing section was found 29 metres from the main wreckage, its tip showing evidence of a severe ground impact at the leading edge. The port inner wing displayed a deep indentation at the leading edge just inboard of the outer wing joint. This indentation extended back to the rear spar. The rear spar had become distorted and had jammed the aileron pulley in a way that would sustain a steep left turn in flight. The entire central portion of the fuselage, including the cockpit, had been consumed by fire. The engine was embedded almost vertically in the ground to a depth of 600 mm. The pilot's body had been thrown from the cockpit by the force of the impact with the ground and was found a short distance away. It was noted immediately at the beginning of the crash investigation that the wreckage lay some 90 metres below the level of the dressing area, and in a place that the aircraft would not have crossed in the course of its sowing operation. Attention was then focused on the deep indentation in the leading edge of the port wing and the associated jamming of the aileron control pulley in a position that would sustain a left turn. There was no object in the wide area around the crash site that could account for this damage. It was established that the pine sapling close to the wreck had been sheared through by the aircraft's propeller. It was suspected that, when flying in the sowing area, the aircraft had hit some obstruction, the damage from which had forced the plane into an irrecoverable steep left turn, or locked the plane into such a turn if it was making the manoeuvre at the time of collision. An intensive search was made in the sowing area to locate some object that could have caused the deep indentation to the port inner wing section. No completely reliable evidence was found, but two trees on the edge of the sowing area showed the sort of damage that an aircraft might inflict. Furthermore, there were trails of superphosphate leading up to those trees and leading away from them in the direction of the valley below. A flying trial showed that a Fletcher making a steep left-hand turn over those trees would pass directly over the crash site. However, no evidence in the form of wreckage or paint particles was found in the trees.
Source: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=63267

The aircraft was engaged in an aerial work operation, spreading superphosphate. On landing after the 35th sortie of the day the pilot reported to his loader driver that the elevator was sticking and tending to jam when the control column was pulled back to near the stop. The loader driver crawled into the rear interior of the fuselage, making a visual check of the elevator cables and pulleys as the pilot operated the elevator control. A small curl of 16-gauge metal, about 1/4 inch high, was found in the lower elevator pulley and removed. The pilot confirmed the operation of the elevator was now satisfactory and flying was resumed. At 10:15 the loader driver noticed that the noise of the aircraft had ceased and looking around saw the Fletcher lying wrecked on the summit of a ridge. The aircraft had dived into the ground at an attitude that was slightly over the vertical. All the wreckage, with the exception of the nose wheel, was confined to the immediate area of the point of impact. A witness mark on the dial of the ASI showed that the impact with the ground had occurred at a speed of 127 mph. There was no fire. The pilot Trevor Robert Wilson was killed.
Source: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=63318

The aircraft was on the take off run when two cattle beasts suddenly appeared from sloping ground on the left of the strip and ran across. The pilot attempted to lift off to avoid a collision and the plane adopted a steep nose-high attitude, with the tail cone hitting the ground, before striking the animals. The impact caused the aircraft's elevators to separate from the airframe. The calculated ground speed at this stage was 71 mph and the aircraft overran the sloping end of the airstrip. It was thought that the pilot, unaware of the loss of the elevators, attempted to continue the take off in order to retrieve the situation, rather than trying to stop in the limited distance available on the sloping runway. The plane appears to have lofted, out of control, for a distance of 264 feet (80 meters) before striking the ground at angle of 70 degrees, and sliding another 66 feet (20 meters). The aircraft was wrecked and a fire broke out in the engine bay and was fed by the gradual discharge of fuel from the fractured outlets of the wing tanks. The loader driver and two others were quickly at the scene and the only fire extinguisher available, a 20-pound (9 kg) foam-type was used in an effort to blanket the pilot, whose leg was trapped, from the flames. Three other persons who had been working nearby arrived and assisted by bringing water from a pond close by. These commendable efforts were insufficient to quell the blaze and the pilot had suffered severe burns before he was finally removed from the wreckage. The pilot William George Jackson Deller died as the result of his injuries.
Source: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=63366

Crashed in unknown circumstances while performing a crop spraying mission. The pilot, sole on board, was injured.

Crashed in unknown circumstances while performing a crop spraying mission. The pilot, sole on board, was injured.

Crashed in unknown circumstances in Taeroa, near Taihape, while completing a crop spraying mission. The pilot George Shirtcliffe was killed in the crash.

Loss of control during a routine aerial topdressing flight. The pilot was new to ag. flying having made his first topdressing sortie on the 10th of October, and had logged fifty hours of topdressing in the twenty-two subsequent days before he was killed. His flying time in the FU24 was 68 hours. His total time, dual and solo, was 281 hours. The loader driver saw the aircraft making a normal sowing run and then, climbing to 150 feet, enter a medium turn to the right. It appeared that the pilot was positioning his aircraft for a run on a reciprocal heading. This turn progressed through 90 degrees and then the witness saw the nose begin to drop, accompanied by an increase in both the angle of bank and rate of turn. This unusual attitude so close to the ground caused the loader driver to leave his cab and run in the direction of the plane as it disappeared from his view behind a hill. Another witness, who saw the full sequence of events, said the the plane made two full rotations in its spiral dive before crashing and exploding in flames. The weather was CAVU and calm, ideal conditions. The engine was producing power right up to impact. There was no evidence of structural failure in flight.

Under the command of F/Lt B. Dwyer, the aircraft struck an uncharted, submerged reef while taking-off from the Te Whanga Lagoon. The impact severely damaged the flying boat’s hull. There were no casualties but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair and abandoned and later dismantled.

The pilot, sole on board, was involved in a crop spraying mission in the region of Putaruru. While cruising at low height, the single engine aircraft struck power cables and crashed in a field 109 meters farther. The airplane was destroyed upon impact and the pilot, Bruce John Oliver, was killed.