According to an eyewitness whose attention was caught by the loud gunning of its engine as it approached the airport, the little two-seater’s wings both vibrated visibly before the left wing folded back against the fuselage. The airplane pitched downward and began to spin; the right wing then bent upward, and it too folded back against the fuselage. Moments later the airplane struck the ground and exploded in flames.
Two men were aboard: the 350-hour pilot-owner, who had bought the airplane from its amateur builder seven weeks earlier, and a 17,000-hour flight instructor. The airplane, equipped with a six-cylinder Jabiru engine of 110 hp, had been flown only 60 hours; this was its new owner’s first outing in it.
