Meteor aircraft explosion
| Type of event | Accident
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| Date occurred or began | September 16, 1955
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Mrs H.L. Jury, of Mallala, and five-year-old Wendy Cox, narrowly escaped serious injury when a Meteor NF-11 crashed shortly after take off and exploded a quarter of a mile from where they were standing.
Mrs Jury was standing beside a fence post in her garden with Wendy Cox, who was spending the afternoon with her. There was a crash and a wheel came through the wire netting of the fence of the other side of the post.
Mrs Jury said, 'It flew past me and flattened some of the plants, squeezed under a trellis grapevine and hit the wall of the house.'
Part of the stone wall was chipped by the wheel. It was about 18 in. in diameter.
The turbine from the jet engine weighs about a hundredweight. It was collected from Mrs Jury's garden later in the afternoon by officers from the airfield.
Mrs Jury said she could feel the heat from the impeller.
The wreckage of the aircraft fell in wheat fields owned by Mrs Jury's husband and Mr O.W. Pitt over a radius of about 150 yards. The aircraft had taken off from the Mallala R.A.A.F Station, having delivered a pilot who was to participate in the forthcoming annual Mallala Air Show which was usually attended by many thousands of people from Adelaide and elsewhere. The crash was attended by the Mallala E.F.S. Brigade (now C.F.S.) but nothing could be done to save the pilot. The crash site was almost the same as one involving another air crash which occurred during World War 2, when two Avro Ansons collided when coming into lan d from the south. Each plane had an instructor pilot and a young trainee pilot. All four men were killed.
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