Unsolved Aviation Mysteries E-Book

Keith McCloskey

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 287

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Conspiracy theories of sabotage, murder and even UFOs flourish around the greatest unsolved mysteries of aviation from the twentieth century. This account of the most intriguing loose ends from aeronautical history provides the known details of five great mysteries and the best (and most colourful) attempts to explain what might have happened. Planes disappearing out of the sky, shady dealings with Sri-Lankan businessmen, the plummeting death of the richest man in the world in 1928 and even the Kennedy family all feature in these gripping open cases. Having previously written about the Dyatlov Pass Incident and cast his detail-oriented eye over many other aviation mishaps, Keith McCloskey now turns his attention to reassessing these five mysteries –all of which occurred over water, none of them ever resolved.

Leseprobe

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Keith McCloskey, 2020

The right of Keith McCloskey, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9457 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Dedicated to Norrie Simpson

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1   The Isle of Mull Cessna

Chapter 2   The Kennedy Curse

Chapter 3   The Kinross Incident

Chapter 4   A Sri Lankan Mystery

Chapter 5   Murder, Suicide or Accident?

Acknowledgements and Sources

INTRODUCTION

This collection of five aviation mysteries all have the theme of aviation and the sea. Aircraft that disappear over the sea, lakes or rivers are always more difficult to solve or explain because in many cases they literally disappear from sight, often leaving just a tantalising clue such as a wheel, as in the case of the missing Sri Lankan Learjet or the Isle of Mull Cessna. In the case of the Mull Cessna, I believe I am publishing here for the first time three underwater photos of the wreckage of the aircraft (Cessna F.150H registered G-AVTN). The photos are part of a batch of twenty-eight slides taken in September 1986 by diver Richard Grieve, who kindly gave them to me. They have been seen by others, who say they are not conclusive enough, but I reproduce two (out of three) of the slides showing the registration, and the reader can then agree or disagree that this is the missing Cessna flown by Peter Gibbs on Christmas Eve 1975.

The Kinross Incident has attracted much attention from those interested in UFOs. The most puzzling aspect of this story is the manner in which the F-89C Scorpion disappeared after it was seen to merge with an unidentified aircraft (supposedly a Canadian military aircraft) on a radar screen. Not a single trace of it was found on the surface of Lake Superior.

The Learjet that carried Sri Lankan businessman Philip Upali Wijewardene also disappeared from radar screens as it approached the coast of Indonesia. Apart from a wheel, this too has left no other trace and the question remains as to why it suddenly disappeared as it was climbing towards a height of 39,000ft (11,887m).

Although some may say the JFK story can be explained, there are also many who feel there is more to the loss of the aircraft than first appears. There is also the other aspect of a seeming curse that hangs over the family, particularly with respect to aviation.

The last chapter concerns the case of businessman Alfred Loewenstein. The story involves the death of a man, rather than the disappearance of a plane, but nonetheless it is one of the most intriguing stories in aviation mysteries. Quite simply, he did not have the strength to open the aircraft door on his own, so how did he fall 4,000ft (1,219m) to his death in the English Channel?

I hope the reader finds these stories interesting, also bearing in mind that each one involves the tragic loss of life.

Keith McCloskey

Berkshire

June 2019

CHAPTER 1

THE ISLE OF MULL CESSNA

The Isle of Mull is the second largest island of the Inner Hebrides after Skye. Despite its size, it has always had a fairly low population, with the small town of Tobermory acting as the main centre on the island. The island is known for tourism and its whisky, but despite being 90 miles from Glasgow, it used to require an eight-hour journey by road/rail and ferry to get there. With the advent of Scottish airline Loganair in the early 1960s, a proposal was put forward to establish an airfield on Mull. Army sappers cleared an area near Salen of 50,000 tonnes of earth and 1,000 trees to lay out a 780ft (238m) grass runway in only fifty-four days.

Once the airstrip was ready, Loganair started a service from Glasgow to Mull via North Connel, which was the airfield for Oban. The service ran at weekends in the summer and eventually became a daily service during the summer months. The schedule continued until 1975, when it was dropped as not being viable, which was a blow to the tourist economy of the island. However, the airstrip with the adjoining Glenforsa Hotel proved to be popular with private flyers, who would fly in and park their aircraft there, stay at the hotel and explore the island. The hotel had almost burned down in 1968 and was rebuilt in a Norwegian log style with chalets. In the same year that Loganair discontinued its summer service from Glasgow, the Glenforsa strip became the scene of one of the most enduring mysteries in Scotland to date.

On 20 December 1975, two guests arrived at the hotel, Norman Peter Gibbs and his companion, university lecturer Dr Felicity Grainger. They had visited previously on a few occasions and enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere of the area. Gibbs, who used Peter as his first name, was a 53-year-old property developer and had formed a company named Gibbs and Rae with a partner. He had come to Mull on holiday but also tohave a look at property in the area with a view to buying a place he could turn into a hotel with some land, where he could make an airstrip for visiting aircraft. What had given him the idea was the Glenforsa Hotel itself, with its own airstrip.

The two of them had driven to the Glenforsa Hotel by car having travelled over from Oban on the ferry. Gibbs was a pilot and had served in the RAF during the Second World War. After his arrival, he was advised that there was an aircraft for hire at North Connel airfield at Oban. The aircraft was Cessna F.150H G-AVTN and its owner was a well-known person named Ian Robertson Hamilton, a local market gardener and businessman and one of the four men who had stolen the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day in 1950. After a phone call from Gibbs to Hamilton, it had been intended that Hamilton was to fly the Cessna from North Connel over to Gibbs at the Glenforsa Hotel strip and Gibbs would then fly Hamilton back to North Connel before returning to Mull. It was a fairly short journey each way of around twenty minutes, and with the time taken for the formalities of handing the Cessna over to Gibbs when he arrived at Glenforsa and Gibbs landing at North Connel to drop Hamilton off and take off again the whole exchange should have taken well under two hours. However, the weather, which was to play a significant part in this story, intervened and so Hamilton rang Gibbs to say he could not fly over. From all accounts, Gibbs was never one to let anything stand in his way, so he arranged with Hamilton that he would drive over on the ferry from Mull to Oban with Grainger, meet Hamilton and return himself with the aircraft. Grainger would then drive the car back to the hotel.

Once back at the Glenforsa Hotel, both Gibbs and Grainger spent the next few days looking at property in the area and taking the time to relax.

On Christmas Eve, the two of them set off from the Glenforsa airstrip in the Cessna to the Isle of Skye and returned at 4.30 p.m. It was Gibbs’ birthday the following day as well as being Christmas Day, so they had an evening meal with wine in the hotel rather than go out. At 9.30 p.m., after he had finished his meal, Gibbs made an extraordinary decision and told his companion that he wanted to take the Cessna up for a quick circuit. It was a dark night with clouds and the airstrip had no facilities for night flying. Gibbs must have had some inkling that what he was about to do entailed some risk because he assured Grainger that if he got into trouble, he would bring the wheels down into the water to slow the aircraft down, then escape and make his way to the shore.

Unknown to Gibbs was the fact that the weather was shortly going to deteriorate rapidly. Gibbs should have phoned for a forecast but chose not to. He changed and then informed Roger Howitt (one of the hotel owner’s sons) that he was about to undertake a quick circuit in the Cessna. Gibbs asked Grainger to place two torches for him at the end of the runway for him to use as a guide to landing. They both walked out to the Cessna and got in. Gibbs started the engine and let it run for a while before taxiing to the end of runway 26 at the eastern end of the strip. Grainger got out of the aircraft and placed the torches on the end of the runway. She then walked to a nearby fence to wait for him to carry out the short flight. Gibbs taxied to the other end of the runway and again ran the engine for a number of minutes. He then released the brakes and gathered speed down the grass airstrip to take off.

Grainger watched as the Cessna took off and made a right turn to come back parallel to the airstrip. The plane then made another right turn to come around to line up and begin its descent for landing, when it disappeared behind a group of trees beyond the runway end. It was the last time anyone would see Peter Gibbs alive and the last time anyone would see the aircraft, which, at the time of writing, has yet to be ‘officially’ found and recovered.

Grainger waited for some time and when it was apparent that there was no sign of the Cessna, she made her way back to the hotel. Once it was clear that Gibbs and the Cessna had disappeared, the RAF Kinloss Mountain Rescue Team, based at Fort William, were called in immediately and police and local volunteers started searching the hills. Around forty-five searchers went out each day and were spread fairly widely as they were looking for an aircraft rather than a body on its own. These searches lasted for five days, in extremely bad weather.

Due to the holiday period at the time of the disappearance, there were no fishing boats out in the sound, so other than the witnesses at the Glenforsa Hotel, nobody else had seen what happened. The strong possibility that the Cessna may have come down into the Sound of Mull itself led to a search with Royal Navy Sea King helicopters. Unfortunately, they found nothing and the search on land and over the Sound of Mull was called off.

After the searches had been called off, life started to return to normal and the general feeling was that both the Cessna and Gibbs had gone down into the sea with the possibility that they would never be found. However, on 21 April 1976, almost exactly four months after the disappearance, Glenforsa Farm Manager and shepherd Donald McGillivray was out walking across the high ground above the Glenforsa Hotel when he came across a body lying on a tree trunk. The spot where he found the body was roughly 400ft above sea level and over a mile away from the hotel. It was the body of Peter Gibbs.

The discovery of Gibbs’ body sparked another bout of intensive searching for nearly a week with, again, a similar number of people (forty-plus) involved. However, there was no sign of the Cessna and no other sign of how Gibbs might have reached the spot he was found in. The discovery of his body raised more questions than answers in what was turning into a peculiar tale.

The system for investigating deaths in Scotland is different to the rest of the UK. There is no system of coroners’ inquests in Scotland as there is in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Accidental, unexpected, unexplained, sudden or suspicious deaths are investigated privately for the local crown agent, an official called the Procurator Fiscal. Only certain types of death are investigated further at Fatal Accident Inquiries (FAIs). Gibbs’ death fell into the category of requiring an FAI and this was duly held in Oban on 24 June 1976. The Board of Trade Senior Accident Inspector William Black Cairns was the first to give evidence at the inquiry. Cairns had spent eleven years in the RAF with a further eighteen years of test-flying experience behind him, totalling over 10,000 hours of flying time. He had arrived in Oban on 2 January 1976, nine days after the Cessna had disappeared and two days after the search had been called off. (At this point Gibbs was assumed to be with the missing aircraft.) Cairns gave an outline of the servicing of Cessna F.150H G-AVTN, that it was maintained by a company in Edinburgh (Lowland Aero Services) and that the certificate of registration and certificate of airworthiness were both in order. Cairns was asked if there was anything at all about the Cessna that would have suggested it had not been looked after properly or was in such a condition that it was dangerous to fly, to which he replied no.

When it came to the background of Peter Gibbs and his suitability as a pilot, a slightly different picture began to emerge. Cairns said that Gibbs was an ex-RAF pilot and after the end of the war had subsequently joined the RAF Reserve with the rank of flying officer. Gibbs held a private pilot’s licence, which Cairns said had expired in October 1974, a full year and two months before the Cessna went missing. The renewal of a licence was dependent on the pilot’s age and in Gibbs’ case, he was required to renew it every twelve months. The renewal of Gibbs’ licence was also dependent on him passing a medical examination, which he had undertaken in May 1975. Following the medical, Gibbs applied for the licence renewal, only to be told that he would have to undergo a general flying test before it could be renewed. The records show that Gibbs did not bother to take the test for whatever reason. Flying with an out-of-date licence might be viewed as a lesser offence by some, especially as Gibbs was only flying himself in a light aircraft on the lowest category of licence, but Cairns stated that Gibbs ‘was flying illegally’.

There was also a further issue with regard to the licence, because the medical undertaken by Gibbs on 10 July 1975 found that his eyesight was defective; a condition was attached to the medical certificate that stated Gibbs had to wear spectacles when he was flying. What Cairns took pains to point out was that although Gibbs had passed his medical with the condition that he would have to wear glasses whilst flying, he had not taken the general flying test, so as matters stood, his flying licence was still invalid. It is possible to argue that the invalid licence was a technicality. Gibbs had, at least, made an effort to partially renew it by taking the medical. However, the next issue raised in the inquiry was not so lightly dismissed and called into question his judgement as a competent pilot.

When Gibbs announced his decision to take the Cessna up for a quick circuit, it was already well after 9 p.m. It was also a cold, dark, cloudy night, so visibility was very poor. On top of this, snow or sleet had been forecast so the weather was set to deteriorate very shortly. Cairns was asked what experience Gibbs had of night flying and the answer was a total of only five hours. In response to the question as to whether this might be considered ‘limited’, Cairns replied that it was extremely limited. Despite Gibbs’ lack of experience of flying at night, there was nothing to officially stop him from doing so, notwithstanding the issue over his invalid licence. The only problem that might have arisen would have been if he had taken a passenger up with him, for which he would have needed a night rating on his licence. Tied in with Gibbs’ lack of experience of night flying was the problem of the Glenforsa strip itself. Cairns responded to a question as to its suitability for night-flying operations that it was not suitable at all. He went further, saying, ‘As a personal opinion, with the experience I have in flying, I would certainly not attempt night flying from Glenforsa.’

At this point in the FAI, the Fiscal mentioned the very poor weather that night and then asked Cairns for his opinion as to the suitability of the two torches used by Grainger to act as landing aids. The Fiscal indicated the two torches in the room before he asked Cairns for his opinion. Cairns was scathing in his response, saying, ‘In my opinion, they are absolutely worthless as a form of indication.’

The damning of the torches by Cairns was followed by his statement that the Glenforsa airstrip had no landing lights at all. Cairns then pointed out that in the absence of any wreckage of the Cessna itself, he could only make preliminary enquiries as his work was primarily concerned with an examination of the aircraft, if it was available. The Fiscal said he accepted that and put two hypothetical questions to Cairns.

The first question he asked was: Would the Cessna have been completely consumed with little or no trace if a serious fire had broken out? Cairns replied that it was unlikely as, even with a serious fire, there was always something left as wreckage. Cairns was then asked to consider if it had been possible there had been a total or partial engine failure while Gibbs was flying the plane and had made a soft landing on some part of the island. Again, Cairns responded that it was unlikely because although it was a hypothetical question, he felt that as the Cessna had been recently serviced, there was only a remote chance of that happening, unless it had run out of fuel. After prompting, Cairns did say that a stall might have been possible and that for this Cessna in landing configuration, the stalling speed would be in the region of 50mph. He made the point that if the Cessna was headed into the wind, the effective speed could have been as low as 25mph.

The Fiscal came back to the theme of the plane making a soft landing on some part of the island with the suggestion that Gibbs had jumped out and it had continued on its set course without him. Cairns didn’t reject the possibility but argued that to do such a thing and open the door in a flight, which he said was most likely in a climb condition, would be a very difficult thing to do. Furthermore, Cairns said he had never heard of anyone climbing out of a plane to jump in this way. Continuing in this argument, Cairns was asked if Gibbs would have hurt himself by jumping from a moving plane. Cairns said that he had never heard of anyone doing so and compared it to jumping from a window on the second floor of a building, and that he would expect someone jumping from a building at this height would almost certainly sustain fractures.

There followed an odd exchange between Cairns and the Fiscal. The Fiscal was presumably wanting to be clear in his mind about what exactly was involved in opening the door of a Cessna, so he asked Cairns if the pilot would step out on to the wing, to which Cairns confirmed that he would. However, the Cessna was a high-wing monoplane and a pilot opening the door would step out into nothing, other than a small footstep built into the fixed undercarriage strut. The small footstep was just an aid to getting in and out and a pilot wanting to exit could just push away from the door onto the ground or into the air as there was nothing to impede him.

The Fiscal then focused on the crux of the matter – where was the Cessna? It was Cairns’ view that the plane was very unlikely to have come down in the sea surrounding Mull owing to the absence of sodium chloride in the flying boots worn by Gibbs or in his watch. These were two places where it would be expected to find evidence of salt water if someone had been in the sea. He said that the pathologist would also have expected to find traces of sea vegetation in these two places and there had been none.

On the issue of Gibbs’ body being found near the top of the hill above the Glenforsa airstrip, Cairns was asked by the Fiscal to describe a situation he had been involved in concerning the loss of a light plane in the UK that had come down in a forest and had been covered over by the trees. Cairns said that the situations were different and no parallel could be drawn because the earlier accident had involved the plane coming straight down into the forest nose first and the pilot had been killed on impact. The plane had been suspended in the trees and was not found for two months.

The Fiscal was keen to examine all the scenarios as to where the Cessna may have ended up and asked Cairns if he thought the aircraft had come down in one of the hill lochs on Mull. Cairns was shown some pictures and asked if he felt that 300 yards (274m) would be enough for the Cessna to stop in if it had stalled. Cairns did not want to be drawn and replied that the pictures of the loch in question did not give any idea of dimensions or size. He did say that if it had been in a stall condition, the Cessna’s undercarriage could bring it to a stop in water within a distance of 100ft (30m) and that the aircraft would eventually sink. Cairns again did not want to be drawn on whether the Cessna may have made any marks around a loch as it came down and, in fairness, it was far too generalised a question for him to give a specific answer.

Ian Robertson Hamilton, from whom Gibbs had hired G-AVTN, came into the exchange and asked Cairns to describe the radio equipment on board the Cessna that night. These were a 360 degree VHF transceiver, a VHF Omni-frequency radio finding facility, a medium-frequency radio finding facility and a radar transponder. Hamilton then produced some handling notes and asked Cairns to confirm that what was written on the back cover of the notes was a list of VHF stations along with a list of Omni-frequency stations. His aim was to show that assuming a copy was in G-AVTN, which it most likely was, then Gibbs could have chosen a station on one of the channels and be in instant communication should he have needed this. Hamilton asked Cairns to confirm that the international distress frequency was 121.5 and that no calls had been made from G-AVTN on the night of 24 December 1975. He also asked Cairns to confirm that Gibbs could have used the Omni-range unit to check his position from Omni stations at Machrihanish, the Isle of Jura, Stornoway and Prestwick. They were all listed, with their frequencies, on the back cover of the notes and Gibbs would have known how to use them. The point was that Gibbs did not try to call for help or try and check his position that night if he had been in trouble.

This led on to the area of preflight planning and whether Gibbs had carried out any. It was said of Gibbs by others later in the FAI that he was thorough in his preparation. The areas of preflight planning that Cairns expected Gibbs to have carried out included checking the following: weather condition; weather forecasting; that the radio aids were in working order; where the diversion airfield was and that it was available; the amount of fuel for the flight and that the Cessna was in a serviceable condition. Granted Gibbs was not at an airfield that had facilities but at a hotel that had little more than a grass strip. He was taking the Cessna up for one circuit and landing, which shouldn’t have lasted longer than a matter of minutes from take-off to landing. In the absence of facilities at Glenforsa such as air traffic control and a meteorological office, Cairns told the FAI that he would have expected Gibbs to phone Prestwick and Machrihanish to first make sure they were available and also to get the weather forecast. At the very least, Gibbs should have dialled the local meteorological broadcast. Gibbs had done none of these things.

Going back to the invalid licence, Cairns described, in response to questions, that from the time Gibbs’ licence became invalid fourteen months previously, he had flown from Biggin Hill for a total of twelve hours’ flying time with an invalid licence. The line of questioning by the Fiscal seemed to suggest that Gibbs may have been getting a little ‘rusty’ and appeared to be trying to be fair to him by then asking if it was possible that he had been unable to use any of the VHF radio equipment due to the high ground on Mull. Cairns agreed that it was, at least, a possibility. Cairns also agreed that Gibbs would have been given everything he needed by way of notes on handling characteristics of the Cessna F.150H and would have had access to charts if he had needed them. Having set the possible scene that Gibbs had taken off with knowledge of how the Cessna handled and had got into difficulties but was unable to use the VHF equipment because of the high ground, the Fiscal asked Cairns about Gibbs making an attempt to land on the surface of a loch as the safest option. Cairns had already gone over this scenario and again repeated that it was a hypothetical situation he was not qualified to answer. When asked what he would have done in the same situation, Cairns replied that he would rather have put the Cessna down on land than water because the fixed undercarriage meant the aircraft stood a good chance of going nose first into the water as soon as it came down. Cairns did concede that the land around Glenforsa was so hilly that there would have been little option but to try and come down on water.

Cairns’ examination came to an end with a question from the sheriff and Hamilton. The sheriff asked him if the landing lights would have been switched on if the Cessna was coming down to make an emergency landing and whether those lights could be seen depending on what part of the island the aircraft was coming down on. He followed this up with a final question to Cairns and that was if he (the sheriff) had been hiring an aircraft from him, whether Cairns would expect to see his licence, to which Cairns responded that he certainly would. The sheriff then asked Hamilton whether it happened that aircraft were hired from a flying club or private operator without them asking to see the pilot’s licence, to which he said he had no experience of that.

Ian Robertson Hamilton was then sworn in, giving his profession as a market gardener. Before he was examined, the sheriff told Hamilton that he did not have to answer any questions that he felt might incriminate him. Hamilton confirmed he owned G-AVTN and that he had received the insurance payment in full for the £3,000 value of the Cessna. He had bought the aircraft in September 1975 and he explained that it held a General Service Certificate of Airworthiness (as opposed to a Standard Certificate of Airworthiness) which was a higher standard because it was available for hire. G-AVTN had also been extensively refurbished in March 1975 by Lowland Aero Service at Turnhouse Airport, Edinburgh, and was basically as good as new. In the time that Hamilton owned it, he said that it was maintained and kept in a good state of airworthiness. Peter Gibbs was the second person to hire the aircraft since he had bought it.

After his arrival at the Glenforsa Hotel, Gibbs had phoned Hamilton and told him that he had flown into Glenforsa before and was currently staying at the hotel and wanted to hire his Cessna. He explained that he was a qualified pilot but did not have his licence with him.

At the mention of Gibbs saying he did not have his licence with him, Hamilton said he would make a judgement as to his skills when he saw him. The original plan, he explained, was that on 21 December 1975, Hamilton was to fly G-AVTN over to the strip at the Glenforsa Hotel, meet Gibbs to confirm he could fly the aircraft and then Gibbs would fly Hamilton back to North Connel. On that day (21 December) he said the weather was below his limits for flying so Gibbs said he would drive over the following day and take the Cessna back with him. While Hamilton was explaining the plan for Gibbs to receive the aircraft, he was stopped by the Fiscal and asked to confirm that he had taken Gibbs at face value when he said that he had a flying licence and was prepared to let Gibbs take control of the aircraft without seeing the licence. Hamilton responded that he was only going to let Gibbs have the aircraft after he (Hamilton) had made some independent inquiries. The Fiscal asked him what those independent enquiries were. Hamilton replied that he had phoned the Glenforsa Hotel, who acted as airport managers for the licensee of the airstrip there, and asked them if they had information about Gibbs and whether they were satisfied he was a qualified pilot. Hamilton said that they informed him he was a qualified pilot. This appeared to be a bit of buck passing but Hamilton did say that he decided to make his mind up when he met with Gibbs and watched how he behaved in his preparation to take the Cessna back to Mull.

When asked how long Gibbs spent with the aircraft before he flew it away from Connel, Hamilton stated that Gibbs had spent half an hour going through preflight checks. It was a length of time, Hamilton said, that was overcautious in his view for a simple aircraft such as a Cessna F.150H. In effect, Hamilton was satisfied that Gibbs knew what he was doing, so much so that Hamilton had phoned the Glenforsa Hotel and left a message for Gibbs to call him and to arrange for him to help Hamilton brush up on some aspects of his own flying skills. It was certainly a remarkable stamp of approval from Hamilton, although he had only seen Gibbs on the ground and watched him take off for Mull.

Despite Hamilton’s seal of approval, the sheriff asked him if Gibbs had mentioned using the Cessna for night flying. Hamilton said that Gibbs had not said anything about flying at night, and more to the point Hamilton felt that it was inconceivable Gibbs would have even considered using the aircraft for night flying. He said that had Gibbs asked him about it, he (Hamilton) would have refused to allow him to charter the aircraft. When he was asked why, Hamilton said that he was trying to build up flying at the North Connel airfield and felt it was important to keep well within regulations. The other reason he gave was that he considered it ‘sheer folly’ to attempt flying at night among mountains and near the coast, particularly in December when the weather can be particularly bad. Not only that, but when asked his opinion of Glenforsa’s airstrip, Hamilton replied that he found it difficult to conceive that anyone would even attempt night flying from it. It was a strip, he said, that needed great care and concentration to get in for the first time in broad daylight, let alone even attempting night flying from it. In answer to the question did he think it foolish to attempt to fly from Glenforsa at night, he said that only by a highly experienced pilot on an ambulance flight to save a life should it be used at night.

The issue of the amount of fuel Gibbs would have had available was brought up and Hamilton estimated that Gibbs would have had enough for approximately one and a half hour’s flying time from the time he took off. The only places where fuel was available on the western seaboard of Scotland, apart from his private store at North Connel, was at Prestwick, Glasgow and Stornoway.

A brief exchange followed on how often Hamilton himself used the anti-collision beacon on the Cessna, followed by Hamilton’s dismissal of a number of items of wreckage that had been handed in over the previous six months as possibly being part of the wreckage. Hamilton discounted all of them, including a piece of aluminium that it was thought may have come from the Cessna.

The question that had been put to the accident investigator, Cairns, was also put to Hamilton. He was asked if it was possible that Gibbs had jumped from the Cessna while it was still in flight. He replied that it would have been almost impossible owing to the slipstream as the door was hinged from the front. Gibbs would have been seated right up against the door. This meant that at the lowest speed possible, approximately 60mph, Gibbs would have had to lean back from the door and push hard to try and open it. Leaning back from the door would have lessened the amount of pressure and leverage he could exert against it. This coupled with the fact that Gibbs would have needed to come very close to the ground, meant that he would have been unable to give close attention to flying the aircraft at such a dangerously low level and simultaneously give attention to pushing the door against the slipstream. If the aircraft had flown any slower than 60mph, Hamilton said it would have stalled. He also confirmed that Gibbs would not have been wearing a parachute as there were none on board.