Somerton White's Landplane crash - Sept. 1916
While testing a J. Samuel White Landplane Bomber aircraft at Somerton Airfield, two brothers of Cowes were killed when the aircraft crashed in September 1916.
On 7 September 1916, brothers Ralph (29) and Allan (24) Lashmar, in the employ of J. Samuel White’s Aircraft Department and based at Somerton airfield took off for a second time in a new White’s Landplane Bomber.
The aircraft initially appeared to perform satisfactorily and rose to about 6000 feet and then, having shut off the engine, it started a gliding descent to about 600 feet. The engine was then re-started prior to making another circuit, however something went wrong with one of the wings and the aircraft dropped in a spiral nose-dive and crashed in to a field off Cockleton Lane, Northwood. Both brothers were killed; reports at the time suggest that Ralph was dead when help arrived and that Allan breathed slightly before dying.
No cause for the accident was established at the Inquest.[1]
A modern record of the accident states that a subsequent investigation established that a bolt securing the wing bracing wires had sheared, allowing the wires to slacken catastrophically causing the wing spars to fail.[2]
