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A tragedy at Pett on the 13th
of December 1923 claimed the life of Lawrence Sperry, aviation
pioneer and third son of gyrocompass co-inventor Elmer Ambrose
Sperry. He was flying a Sperry Messenger (G-EBIJ), owned by The
Sperry Gyroscope Company Ltd, on a journey from Croydon to Amsterdam.
At 12.30 the aircraft was seen to circle over Fairlight, and
it then headed out to sea at low level with a misfiring engine.
It was seen to 'land' in the water a few miles offshore, and
the Rye Harbour lifeboat set out to rescue the pilot. It arrived
on the scene two hours after G-EBIJ came down but no trace of
the pilot could be found, despite the boat cruising the area
for three hours in the hope of locating him. The Messenger was
floating with only the tail unit showing above the water, and
a line was attached and the wreckage towed back to land. The
body of Lawrence Sperry was washed ashore four weeks later, about
seven miles to the east of Pett. The corpse was without flying
suit or boots, and local fishermen attested to the fact that
his body would not have come ashore at that spot if he had drowned
at the crash scene, which suggested Lawrence Sperry had attempted
to swim to safety and had travelled some distance before dying.
The aircraft had been built by the Lawrence Sperry Aircraft Company
of America in 1921, and had been registered as a British aircraft
on 9th November 1923. The owner had been issued with a special
permit allowing flights over Great Britain for a period ending
31st December 1923. Since arriving in England, the Sperry Messenger
had made about ten flights. Modifications to the oil system had
been carried out on the orders of Mr. Sperry himself - one particular
change to the pressure relief valve had been considered 'inadvisable'
by the aircraft firm, and had been carried out under protest.
Accident investigators reached two conclusions after examination
of G-EBIJ - firstly, the compass (a special type of Aperiodic
Centesimal that had been specially made for the pilot) which
had been fitted on the underside of the centre section showed
unduly large deviations as it had not been placed far enough
away from the two magnetos. But the engine failure itself, caused
by the inadvisable modification to the oil feed, was due to warping
and consequent siezure of the valves of the top cylinder followed
by displacement of the tappet rods. |
