Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [14]
What caused the crash remains a mystery. Dust regularly reduced visibility in the bush so a pilot could not see beyond the spinning prop in front of him. When Chapman crashed, it appeared to investigators he had been under full power and had flown at 45 degrees straight into the ground. Fysh himself believed Chapman had not recovered from an earlier bout of influenza and, with the quick turnaround of flights, had been exhausted and simply nodded off at the controls.
Just before 6 am on the morning of 15 November 1934 two kangaroo shooters were finishing off an early breakfast by their roadside campfire a few miles out of Longreach, Queensland, along the Ilfracombe road. Their blue cattle dog cocked an ear as with a roar a large four-engined aircraft appeared above a line of gidgee trees towards Longreach. The early morning sun glinted off the aluminium painted sides of Captain Prendergast’s DH86 as it rose and roared towards them.
The shooters shaded their eyes and stood up to watch. Suddenly they saw the aeroplane start a turn to the right, a flattish turn that increased in speed and developed into a flat spin while forward speed was lost. A rapid flat turning descent now ensued and with a startling suddenness the DH86 hit the ground with a sickening crash. A great cloud of dust drifted off over the dry summer terrain while the two kangaroo shooters sprinted for the wreck only some two hundred yards from their camp.1
Qantas founder Hudson Fysh described the crash of the brand new DH86 on the last leg of its delivery run from England on the opening page of his second volume of memoirs, Qantas at War. But it was only years after the book was published in 1968 that the true story of the cover-up behind the ill-fated DH86 plane was discovered. Commercial necessity produced a plane that was unsafe. Pride and poor communication kept it flying when it should have been grounded and vital life-saving modifications put in place.
The plane had left Longreach early under the command of Captain Prendergast, with First Officer W. V. Creates and Flight Engineer F. R. Charlton. Also on board was Australian Shell aviation representative E. ‘Bunny’ Broadfoot. A spare Gypsy Moth engine had been lashed into place inside the fuselage. It was a fine, cloudless day with only a light south-east wind. So what could have gone wrong for a brand new plane to fall out of the sky just ten minutes later? A smashed watch on the arm of one of the crew had stopped at 5.50 am. Teenager Doreen Coleman got out of bed to watch the plane as it flew overhead and saw it descend in a spin before appearing to come out of it in a swoop at just 200 feet and then crashing to earth.
The Accident Investigation Committee Report pieced together what had happened. Captain Prendergast had climbed out of the pilot seat and gone to use the toilet compartment at the rear of the plane. Control was left in the hands of the first officer, but he was busy attempting to send a test radio message. Therefore the experienced flight engineer, whilst not a pilot, was in fact in control of the plane. The DH86 became notorious for its lack of directional stability. Once it started to yaw it took a great deal of skill to prevent it going into a spin. The report suggested that the captain’s weight in the toilet at the back of the cabin, combined with the weight of the engine, had moved the aircraft’s centre of gravity too far back. The position of the bodies in the wreckage indicated that Captain Prendergast had realised