EERIE MUSIC NZ has a legacy of deadly disasters. The whole party seemed to fall at once. Praying to God, cos I wanted to survive. Scary. Bloody scary. Disasters that shaped this country. Where I'm standing is where my grandfather got involved in the battle with the Turks. Two yachts were lost forever. The worst motoring accident in NZ history. Seven well-known NZers retrace our darkest days, bringing history alive... Help! ...through the eyes of descendants. It stayed with me. Probably always will. It was something that we will never, ever forget. All of us. Copyright Able 2015 On a bleak afternoon on October 23rd 1948,... the National Airways Corporation's Lockheed Electra Kaka prepared for take off at Palmerston North. It was bound for Hamilton, but flying in heavy cloud and rain, the 13 passengers and crew had no idea of the terrible fate that awaited them. EXCITING MUSIC PLANE DRONES After leaving Palmerston North, the plane tracked north-west towards Wanganui before turning right, and then heading up the centre of the island, towards Hamilton. With a cruising altitude of just 6000ft, the Lockheed Electra's route took the aircraft beneath the peaks and the summits of both Egmont-Taranaki to the west and Mt Ruapehu to the east. CONTEMPLATIVE MUSIC My Dad was a pilot, and I've been around aeroplanes for much of my life. As a pilot myself, I know what it's like to fly around these mountains and the dangers they can present. Of course, the commercial airliners we use today ` the jets and the turbo props ` fly well above the snowy mountain peaks, but back in 1948, they actually flew between them, with just basic navigational equipment. So when conditions got a bit rough, flying was, well, perilous, to say the least. Just after 1.30pm, the crew of the Kaka reported they had reached Wanganui and were climbing to 6000ft, but the conditions were bad ` they were flying in thick cloud and heavy rain. National Able George King, confirm position, please. These were the last communications received from the Kaka. When the flight failed to arrive in Hamilton, a massive search was launched. Where was the plane, had it gone down, and were there any survivors? DRAMATIC MUSIC LAID-BACK PIANO MUSIC The 13 passengers and crew aboard the Kaka came from all over the country and from all walks of life. Eleanor-Margaret Kunz was taking a holiday after the tragic death of her newborn baby, the Collinge family were visiting relatives for the long Labour weekend, and father of eight William Bell was returning home after being away on business. In 1948 flying was novel, adventurous, and the Lockheed Electra was, well, quite the fashionable way to travel. First impressions ` what do you think about that? Oh, beautiful. Yes, beautiful. Now almost 70 years later, only a handful of pilots remain who flew them, including Bill Rainbow, who was only 21 at the time. When was the last time you saw an Electra? I've been retired for 35 years ` uh, naturally, I haven't seen one since then, so that would be 1950. When this partially restored Lockheed Electra is finished, the type will once again fly NZ skies. How did she handle the, you know, rough weather, turbulent stuff? Weather? Well, she moved around quite a bit ` that's for sure. It was a nice aeroplane to fly, there's no two ways about it, but it was underpowered, as, of course, everybody knew; uh, hard work in cloud and in turbulence ` that's for sure. Um, you got thrown around an awful lot cos you didn't any real power. The interesting thing about the Electra ` they were actually older than the war. Yeah, they came out in '36 to NZ. Did they? Yes, yes. '36, so as we head into this beautiful, romantic age of flying, we were flying pre-war aeroplanes? Yeah, that's right. # In my dreams... # And for these early pilots, they were long days. Bill would head out to Auckland's Mangere Aerodrome at about 5.30am. Our flight plan just said, uh, departing Mangere, going to Palmerston, an amount of fuel and an amount of passengers, and that's all there was to a flight plan in those days. So you started off at 8 o'clock in the morning ` that was the time for the Electra ` and you got back at... But you couldn't fly at night-time, weren't allowed to fly at night-time, and you got back at half past 4, just at dusk, so if you were running late, you got back at Mangere... Just on dark. Right on dark, yeah. Which would also be illegal. Oh yes. At the time, most passengers were unaware of the risks these early domestic flights involved. And I can remember coming in to Mangere one night right on dark with Fred Allen, and we couldn't get into Mangere, we just couldn't find the damn place, and I recalled, uh, that the Electra was due in at the same time and it was just right on dusk. So I said, 'Fred, what about the Electra?' 'Oh, right, boy.' So I called them up and I said where we thought we were. National, Alpha, Lima, Hotel. National... And the chap was Peter Durning, and he said, 'All right,' he said, 'I'll stay at 300ft and you stay at 200ft.' So there were these two aircraft in dreadful weather` Couldn't see each other. No, one at 200ft, one at 300ft, and, uh, that was the type of flying it was. So it's fair to say that a passenger could get on a plane, get off again and not realise how perhaps precarious at times the flight was gonna be. Bill had flown the ill-fated Kaka numerous times, and he knew pilot Max Hare. He was a lot older than I was. I was only 21, and Maxie would be, uh, perhaps 40s, and he was just in a different era altogether. And, uh, he was a pre-war pilot, and he was basically a bush pilot. See, an airline pilot flies from A to B. He climbs up to an altitude, he flies straight, then he goes down, and that's it ` he keeps to a set route. Whereas a bush pilot's gotta fly anywhere and everywhere, and, uh, they flew by the seat of their pants, and they became very experienced in a very short time ` a completely different type of flying to airline flying. So if you had a first officer who was a bush pilot, would you be happy with that? Oh yeah. Yeah. The route from Palmerston North to Hamilton called on all of these skills. After take off, pilots headed north-west towards the Wanganui Radio Beacon ` a simple but essential navigational aid at the time. Once pilots reached the radio beacon, they would turn right, taking them inland and north, towards their destination, Hamilton. Well, the main thing is you had to keep away from these two little, uh, mountains we had here ` Ruapehu and Egmont. Ruapehu, of course, the highest ground in the North Island, at 9100ft, approximately. Well, the recommended cruise was 6000ft, wasn't it? So you're actually flying below the height of the top of that mountain. Oh yeah. Passengers didn't like being up at 10,000ft. They were gasping, particularly if they were old. So in actual fact, that aeroplane was programmed to fly below the top of the highest peak. Oh yes. Often in weather where you couldn't see it. Yes. Yes, and, uh, we had no aids to actually indicate where we actually were. No radar, no GPS. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, nothing like that. Just one or two radio beacons. But these radio beacons were vital. In the cockpit, pilots had an instrument much like a compass, with a needle that pointed towards the beacon. As they flew over it, the needle would start to spin around, indicating they were directly above the beacon itself. The needle would just go around, you know. So that means you're pretty much over it, over Wanganui, over the top of it? Yeah, providing there were no thunderstorms around, cos they had a great attraction for thunderstorms, you know, when a thunderstorm happened, the needle would follow the thunderstorms around and do a 360, indicating you were overhead when you weren't actually. So you got an incorrect reading? Oh yeah. And on the day in question, there were two active fronts moving across with embedded thunderstorms, so there was a lot of electrical activity around, so could that have affected the compass? That was the talk when I was there ` uh, a thunderstorm had upset his radio compass and swung around, and Maxie had thought, 'Right, we're here' and he'd turned... Turned right. ...too soon, and the forecast was a bit out with the winds ` uh, that wouldn't help at all. Conspired against him. Yes. Pushed him towards the mountain. With only basic navigational aids and deteriorating weather, the responsibility for his 11 passengers must have weighed heavily on pilot Max Hare. At this farm in Te Mawhai, just south of Hamilton, 15-year-old Margaret Kinmont was waiting for three of these passengers ` Trevor and Helen Collinge and their 2-year-old child, Keith. They were coming for Labour weekend, and she and Keith were coming, but it was a full plane. POIGNANT MUSIC Trevor was unable to get on, because it was Labour weekend and everybody was travelling. And then there was a cancellation, and so Trevor said, 'Oh, goodie, we can all be on the same flight.' Tell me a bit about Aunt Helen ` what sort of a person was she? She was a warm, caring person, and they all loved her. She just knew how to talk and listen to people. She was a very kind person. And little Keith was a darling child and very loving and used to being made a fuss off. And he used to run around the house calling out, 'Margaret! Margaret!' And I'd hide, and I'd bump out and say, 'Boo!' and cuddle him, and we'd laugh together. He touched your heart, that little fella ` no doubt about that. CAR ENGINE DRONES On the day of the accident, Margaret's mother set off for the airport to pick up Helen, Trevor and Keith, only to return later that afternoon alone. So Mum arrived back from the airport in the little Vauxhall with no passengers on board? No. So I rushed out and said,... 'Where are they?' And Mother looked at me and said, 'Well, they had enough fuel to last until 4 o'clock.' It was then well after half past 4, so she'd come home knowing that they were probably dead. POIGNANT MUSIC The farm was right in the search area, and Margaret still vividly remembers the days after the Kaka went missing. Did you hear the aircraft regularly overhead? Oh, they never stopped. We didn't escape from it for one moment in the day. Whatever we were doing, we were thinking about Helen and Trevor and little Keith and hoping that they would be found alive and that they would be well. But no one knew the fate of the Kaka and her 13 passengers and crew. DRAMATIC MUSIC 1 When the Lockheed Electra Kaka disappeared en route from Palmerston North to Hamilton, a huge search was launched. READS: 'The greatest air search in the history of NZ aviation has still failed to discover 'the passenger aircraft which was forced down somewhere in the centre of the North Island on Saturday.' There were lots of reports coming in from up and down the country about people supposedly seeing or hearing the aircraft ` farmer reports sighting wing in the backblocks, smoke in bush traced to tree struck by lightning. And all of these reports and all of these supposed sightings had to be checked out, because one of them could well have been the plane. What a massive organisational thing to try and put together ` coordinating hundreds of rescuers on the ground; notice Air Force guys still involved. They were using ex-World War II DC-3 Dakota aircraft, they were using biplanes, Harvard trainers ` just trying to get some glimpse of an airplane, somewhere obviously down, but they had no clue as to where. I mean, look at the size of that. That is just such a big, big area, probably tens of thousands of square kilometres. That's why the whole search process was so difficult and took so long. CONTEMPLATIVE MUSIC The turning point finally came when several key witnesses were able to narrow the search to the Mt Ruapehu area. Well, I remember Saturday the 23rd of October. It was a wet and very windy day. It was exactly six minutes past 2pm. Beth Price was a newly-wed 19-year-old living in the small railway town of Rangataua. SLIDE-GUITAR MUSIC Your thoughts on being back here after all those years? I love coming back and seeing... the old place again. I really do. It's quiet ` much, much quieter. The striking thing when I look at it, even from here today, is that you live very very close to the railway line itself. Yes, um, I suppose about 30ft from the main trunk line. And as the expresses went through, the house shook each time. (CHUCKLES) Rattle the plates? Rattled the plates. (LAUGHS) Here's a young bride, in Rangataua, who loves aeroplanes. When did that start? After I left school, um,... it was still wartime. I went to night... night classes at, uh, the technical college, and I did a year's theory of flight and also a year of navigation. What did you hope to do? Did you want to become a pilot yourself? I wanted to become a transport pilot. In the war? In the war, yes. But the war ceased a month before I was 18... and I missed out. But I've always loved aeroplanes. CONTEMPLATIVE MUSIC But Beth's knowledge of planes and aviation did prove its worth ` she would unknowingly play a crucial part in locating the missing plane. The day that the Kaka went over ` terrible, miserable day ` what were you doing outside? (CHUCKLES) Well,... I'd just put a sponge in the oven and, um, looked at the clock, and it was six minutes past 2. So I thought, 'I'll go outside and get some more wood for the stove.' So I went out, and I was halfway outside, and I heard this plane, and I thought, 'Hmm.' So I looked up, and there it was. The mountain is over that way... from the house,... and the plane went on an angle,... like that. But the weather was shocking, um, similar to... to today,... and heavy, heavy cloud. And just as I looked up, there was a break in the cloud, and I spotted the plane for about three seconds. And then it was gone from sight? It was gone. In those weather conditions, what did you think about that? I thought they were mad. Not a good day to be flying? Not a good day to be flying, no way. Reports came in, didn't they, from all over the western part of the North Island. People saw something, heard something, but there weren't very many people that were given credibility for what they saw or heard. You were one of those people? Yes. Beth reported her sighting to the police, and when three deerstalkers said they'd also heard a plane in the area, Mt Ruapehu became the focus of the search. I've got here a statement from one of other three witnesses in this area. It's from one of the deerstalkers. 'I would say it was about 2pm. Visibility was then about 10yds.' Goodness me. READS: 'And I did not think that sleet and fog could exist in such a wind. 'We walked in single file. I heard an airplane. It sounded quite close, but higher than we were. 'I passed a remark to the effect that the airplane would hit the mountain. 'Someone else said perhaps it is above the clouds and flying in bright sunshine. 'And I suddenly heard the sound of the engine cut out.' PLANE ENGINE DRONES That would have sounded ominous, wouldn't it? It would. Finally, after almost a week of desperate searching, an air force plane spotted the wreckage of the Kaka on Mt Ruapehu. It had struck a ridge and broken apart on impact. The search was now on for survivors. Police and other searchers assembled in the small towns of Horopito and Ohakune, ready to make the difficult climb to the crash site. We'd talked about the plane crash and wondered where it would be, and all of a sudden, we decided we'd head up and have a look. Just 19 at the time, Rodney Winchcombe caught the overnight express and arrived here at the Ohakune Railway Station late on the 29th of October. It would have been about 11 o'clock when we left here. So you marched through the night? Yeah, walked all through the night. We had turns hopping in the front, and showing the way, and you'd carry on a bit of a talk and chat and have a few laughs and jokes. Rodney and his friends had climbed the mountain before, but they had only the most basic equipment, including home-made torches. It was a pretty frosty night the night we went up, and, uh, there were a couple of young chaps staying in the hut from Ohakune ` they'd gone up a bit earlier and had the fire going. So we gave the fire a bit of a stir and put the billy on and had a cup of tea, and then daylight broke, so we carried on up towards the crash site. The crash site was above Lake Surprise. Uh, the snow got a bit icy up there. We never had ice axes or anything. I remember one of the guys slipped, and Noel Marshall had a good strong pair of boots on, and he, sort of, heeled his way down and he grabbed hold of him, and then we grabbed hold of him and pulled them back up again. TENSE MUSIC BOTH PANT It was a steep and arduous climb, and as they neared the crash site, the mood amongst the group began to change. TENSE MUSIC CONTINUES We came to the edge of the... this gully that it was in, but there was a big ridge on the other side, where it had hit into. We stood there and talked about it for a few moments before we descended down into the crash site. SOMBRE MUSIC Were you the first ones on the scene? Yes. Yes, we were the first ones there. One of Rodney's group was Ray Christensen. His photographs and diary are a sombre record of that terrible day. READS: 'Saturday October 30th ` saw the most horrible and sad scene of my life. 'Arrived at scene at 8.30 from Blythe Hut. 'Plane a complete wreck.' I can still see the tail, the two twin tails on the plane, sort of, twisted around to one side and the smell of the... of the fuel. And there was a big gap in the,... uh, side of the plane, and you could see right into it. SOMBRE MUSIC It had been a week since the Kaka had crashed. There were no survivors. I don't think I'd seen too many bodies before that. It would have been instantaneous for them all. You know, it wasn't really a pleasant thing to see it, to see the whole thing there. SOMBRE MUSIC The first party of police arrived from Horopito soon after. They were faced with the grim task of removing the bodies from the wreckage and getting them down off the mountain. SOMBRE MUSIC 1 Horopito is well known for its wreckers yard, but after the crash of the Kaka back in 1948, it was the base for the recovery operation. It's a rugged area that hasn't changed a lot over the years, and the original police reports paint a vivid picture of the grim task confronting the recovery team. READS: We immediately set about organising a party of reliable and tried men for a hard task. Although the weather was good, a lot of the men had no food with them, as they'd been told the air force would drop supplies. READS: 'The group I was with were getting restless. Finally, they said, 'To hell with breakfast ` 'we'll go and find the wreck.' 'We had no decent climbing gear. I was very uncomfortable as one slip meant certain death.' Finally, after an exhausting climb, the first police parties arrived at the crash site. Although the plane had broken into several pieces on impact, the cabin was largely intact. Inside, the scene would have been horrific. READS: 'All the victims were lying on the floor amidst a tangled mass of seats. 'Without exception every victim had shocking head injuries, and death must have been instantaneous.' The bodies were wrapped in parachute material from the supplies the air force had finally dropped. They were then sledged and carried all the way down to Horopito. READS: 'When this photo was taken, 12 bodies had been removed from the plane. 'The path in the background was where the first body was dragged on the way to Horopito. POIGNANT MUSIC 'We sledged and carried the 12 bodies to base camp, where the last party arrived at about 5.30pm. 'At this stage, I had had little or nothing to eat or drink for 36 hours.' FOOTSTEPS TRUDGE Just those stoic,... grim faces kind of tells a story on its own. FOOTSTEPS TRUDGE FOOTSTEPS TRUDGE The bodies were then loaded on to a bush tramway normally used for carrying logs to a local sawmill. And this Horopito bush tramway came right through here. But incredibly, the operation wasn't over yet. 12 of the victims had been recovered, but the body of the last passenger, a Lieutenant Colonel Mumford, couldn't be found. Five men had to climb back up to the crash site, but this time, the weather wouldn't be on their side. READS: 'We arrived at the scene of the crash at 6.15pm. 'It was cloudy and cold, with a very strong gust of wind lifting the snow and making things very unpleasant.' The final body was eventually found buried in snow some distance from the main wreckage. READS: 'After a further strenuous five minutes of digging, 'we uncovered the body of Mr Mumford under about 2'6" of snow, 'and a great excavation had to be made before the feet could be released.' What an exhausting exercise! This guy had been up to the wreck twice in as many days and retrieved the one missing body. He would have been exhausted, surely. While the recovery operation continued, for the families waiting for news, it must have been harrowing. 15-year-old Margaret Kinmont's uncle, aunt and 2-year-old cousin Keith had been on board the Kaka. We just waited and waited and waited, and then when they said they'd found the plane, I was very excited. And the men began chatting about getting,... 'It'll be a job to get the bodies down,' and for the first time it hit me, at 15, that they would be dead. It had never crossed my mind that they wouldn't be alive when they were found. I don't know why I was so stupid, because they'd been lost for a week. But I... I just sat there, and the tears began to run down my face, and one of my little aunts ran across and grabbed me, and that aunt held me, and I felt better, because she let me cry. Huge shock it must have been for you at 15 years of age. She shouldn't have been anywhere near Ruapehu. But perhaps there was some small comfort in knowing the young family had all been together. We all thought about it and said was it was better for them all to be together, and some of the aunts and uncles said yes, it was better. I just wanted them to be still alive. I couldn't believe that that little boy would never run into the house again laughing. Well, I've been lucky to have so little grief in my life, but this was a major one, and I'm glad that I knew Helen and Trevor and little Keith. I'm glad now that I didn't miss out on them. It's worth losing them just to have that pleasure. After the accident, it seemed easy to blame the pilot, and rumours and theories began to circulate. One that has always troubled Margaret even suggested Max Hare wasn't at the controls at the time of the crash. I've got something here, Margaret, that may be of some comfort to you. It may help explain a couple of things, and this is a police record dated 18th of November 1948, and it's a report of Constable C Dudley, and he says,... READS: 'I was one of the first parties to arrive at the scene of the wrecked plane. 'Commander Hare's body was in the pilot's cabin, immediately in front of the controls, 'in what appeared to be a sitting position.' So, we've always been told that he was out with the passengers, but it was the co-pilot who was out with the passengers. Do you find a little bit of comfort perhaps in that? I do. I like to think that he was doing his job just as he should be. Pilot Max Hare had been at the controls, but the official inquiry would still find him responsible for the crash. 1 After the crash of the twin-engined Kaka on Mt Ruapehu, the pilot, the aircraft and the airline came under close scrutiny. This was one of NZ's worst aviation accidents. So a big shock to post-war NZ ` the positive attitudes of after the war, and all of a sudden, a tragedy like this that is not supposed to happen, and so a very dark day in NZ aviation history. We think the impact happened in ten-tenths cloud, so the pilots and passengers wouldn't have known what happened, but tremendous impact into rock and snow here and, uh, the starboard engine and prop flung to the right, port wing to the left, and then the main body of the wreckage literally fell back down the slope about 100ft, uh, in a very, uh, contorted, uh, fashion. What broadly were the terms of reference for the board of inquiry? The board of inquiry was set up in the December, so soon after the accident, and their terms were, you know, what was the cause of the accident, and then the second term was to, uh... did the captain make any decisions or omissions that caused the accident, and what steps, if any, should be taken to ensure that the risk of similar accidents is eliminated or minimised. The board of inquiry said that the, um... the accident was caused by an error of the captain in calculating the aircraft's course. In so far as they said there were no other contributing factors? Yes, so the question ` were there any other factors apart from the action of the crew, which contributed to cause the accident? And the answer is N-O. And I think that's too simplistic. You have to understand the nature of the performance of the aircraft, the route, the weather ` a whole lot of factors. Well, it's interesting you mention the weather, because the forecast on the day, I think, was northerly at 30 knots. In actual fact, it turned out to be north-northwest at 47 knots ` that's severe gale. The stronger winds would have obviously pushed him right into the route of the mountain. You'd have to assume that's one of the things that contributed towards it. It would have been a rough ride ` I mean, as you say, about the wind and the weather. In fact, in the wreckage, they found the seatbelt, uh, you know, sign up, and the co-pilot wasn't in his seat ` he was in the cabin, maybe attending to a distressed passenger, someone who was ill. The plane would have been bucking around. It would have been, you know, very unfortunate, very sad circumstances. These pilots, Max Hare and Brian Russell, they were good pilots? Both of them were quite competent. You know, Commander Hare ` you know, wartime record, over 5000 hours. But again, you place them in the time in that small, tight Electra cockpit with the turbulence and the thunderstorms ` it was, um, a very unfortunate place for them to be. Is it plausible, is it possible that Commander Max Hare was the fall guy, was the scapegoat for some of the shortcomings that were going on in commercial aviation at that time? Jim, I think that's a plausible explanation, and, uh, he could well have been blamed, and the mindset of the inquiry might have, uh, headed in that direction. You look at the route being too close to Mt Ruapehu, you look at the electrical storm, the savage weather, as you indicated ` um, all those circumstances really conspired against Commander Hare and co-pilot Russell. And the aircraft should never have been there at that time. Why is it important to remember and record, you know, aviation stories like this? Yes, 73 passengers were killed in the nine airliner accidents in that pioneering era. So a number of historians and I have worked to make sure there's plaques listing the names of those 73 NZers, Because NZ today enjoys such a safe airline service... that, uh, we need to be reminded that there was a price paid. One of the passengers on the Kaka was Eleanor-Margaret Kunz, but the full story behind her death has only recently come to light with the discovery of a very unusual file. This is the dead-wife file. I knew a little bit about the story behind this file, but I actually came across it when I was, um, cleaning out the family home. And I looked at it, and I looked at the title, and I thought, 'OK, this is really interesting, but I haven't got time to look at this now.' So I put it in my suitcase and I took it back to Sydney with me and finally looked at it when I got back to Sydney. The file originally belonged to Edmund Kunz, Ingrid's German grandfather. My grandfather and my grandmother were living together ` living together ` in the 1920s, um... Unmarried? Unmarried, both at university. He abandoned my grandmother when, um... when he found out that she was pregnant with my mother. Edmund later married Eleanor-Margaret and they emigrated to NZ and lived in this house. When my grandfather and Eleanor-Margaret were married, she was desperate for a child, but my grandfather used to say, 'I don't want a child ` I already have a daughter.' And, um, so Eleanor-Margaret took on a lover. She was desperate for a child, so she looked elsewhere. Eleanor-Margaret left Edmund. She then moved into the small flat above the dress shop that she owned, where the affair continued. The story goes that she fell pregnant to her lover. When the baby was born, it was born with water on the brain and it died a couple of days after it was born. But Ingrid has never seen the baby's birth certificate. The child was a girl, and she was named Margaret. She was also named Margaret, so they named her. Oh my goodness. And she survived for just a couple of days. Six days, I think. Six days. After this had happened, Eleanor-Margaret took a holiday, and unfortunately, she took a holiday on that plane. That fateful decision? That fateful decision. And so, uh, after the crash and after the, um... after Margaret's death, her lover found out... and shot himself. Incredibly, the story then took another turn. Edmund found himself in the middle of a bitter dispute with the family of Eleanor-Margaret's lover. He ended up with these strangers, these people he'd never met, camping on his front lawn, saying, 'We now own half this property. 'Half your assets are ours according to this will that has been redrafted by your wife.' Edmund then took matters into his own hands. He broke into the shop and ran off with some of the stock. Now I just have this strange, peculiar image of this dignified man, running down the streets of Lower Hutt with all these wedding gowns. He realised that once she was... had passed on and been killed, that there would be some contention with regard to her estate, and I think he realised there was gonna be some skulduggery. > The depth of Edmund's feelings are obvious in a letter he wrote to his daughter back in Germany. READS: 'I did not love Margaret any more after her disgraceful betrayal, so flagrant. 'I fear that in the correlation to money, she has gone very far in her betrayal, 'and I will have a lot of annoyance therefore. 'If she now is physically dead, well, for me, she was emotionally dead since her betrayal.' A bit of feeling in that! What can one say? I mean, it's quite a letter. This tragic chain of events had been exacerbated by the crash of the Kaka, but amidst it all, Edmund was reunited with his daughter. She arrived in NZ in the middle of all this. She was arriving from war-ravaged Germany, um, thinking, 'Oh, I'm coming to this peaceful little country at the other end of the world.' And she must have wondered what had hit her. > The bottom line was, when she finally did meet her father, it was a very emotional experience. She said she fainted when she first met him. It certainly brought a light into my grandfather's life, a light when he really needed it. 1 When the Kaka crashed, father of eight William Bell was killed. Now, almost 70 years later, his daughter Barbra is returning to the family home in Hamilton, where her life would change in such an unexpected way. I haven't been back for 30 years, so it's 30 years ago since I saw the house, and I'm staggered and amazed and really moved to find that it still looks exactly the same as it did when I lived here. Barbra was just 13 at the time of the accident, but the house still holds a lot of memories. POIGNANT MUSIC It's been a long time, Barbra. What's it like, being back inside here now? Well, it's kind of healing, in a way. You know, you think of the memories and what went on, and somehow, it's quite nice to come back and feel. REFLECTIVE MUSIC This is me here. I'm 11 and a half. > Dad said that we're going to have a photograph taken, so Mother had to make us clothes, right, cos she was a wonderful, wonderful sewer. So Mum had to get everybody's hair cut, the ribbons all done and everything ready. Cos, you know, when you've got 10 people, that's what it's like. It takes a bit of organising. Yeah, getting them all set up ` absolutely. With eight children to support, Barbra's father worked hard as a baker and ran his own business, the City Home Cookery in downtown Hamilton. So, Barbra, we've got the cookery, little cookery here, way back in the day. Yeah. He would leave about 1.30 in the morning from home. I'd hear him whistle, and then about half past 5, we would be woken up, this three here, and we would cycle down to the shop. And we would help him to finish off the small cakes ` you know, put little chocolate icing on, or cream, or jam and cream, or whatever it was we were doing. And you were still going to school, obviously? Oh, yes, and then we'd go to school. William was also a strict Christian, and the family attended the Gospel Hall, a part of the Brethren Church in Hamilton. In the name of the father and of the son... From the very first thing that I remember as a tiny child, we all had to pray on our chair before dinner. Amen. INTENSE MUSIC And you can't... couldn't even ask for, 'Pass me the bread, the butter.' No, not allowed to do any of that, so that was sort of the strictness that he brought to the table. How was that enforced? Well, if you didn't do it, you got a crack over the knuckles with the stick. Tough times. Yes, they were. At the time of the crash, Barbra's father had been away on business for two weeks before making the fateful decision to fly home. So from Palmerston North to Hamilton. Mr W J Bell. That's it. Stamped. Unbelievable. Her father's death changed the family forever. My mother was a write-off, and she was sobbing, and we're putting our arms around her. I'm going, 'Oh gosh, Mum, you know, I'm just so sorry.' The funeral was held at the Gospel Hall church, and with eight children left fatherless, there was an outpouring of sympathy throughout the Hamilton community. But after the initial shock, the death of her father had an unexpected effect on Barbra. What was the atmosphere and the feeling like in the house after Dad had perished on the mountain? Well, the interesting thing is that when Dad was killed,... it was a much, um,... easier household to live in, because he was a very strict man, so it was quite different. There wasn't so much fear around... for us all. Obviously, Mum emerged as a leader, and it appears that you guys rallied pretty smartly in behind her. Is that right? We did. We rallied right in behind her, because we loved her. She was a very special woman. That's why you're telling us this story? That's why I'm telling you this story, yeah. Barbra's family's tragic circumstances struck a chord up and down the country. This is the NZ Women's Weekly of November the 11th 1948. It says here, 'Many people have expressed the wish that there were some practical way in which they 'could show their sympathy for Mrs WJ Bell, 'the mother of eight children who was bereaved in the Mt Ruapehu air tragedy.' And look at them all. Look at all these people ` 8 shillings. 5 shillings. 2, 2 and sixpence. And out of the goodness of everybody's heart around NZ, they poured money into the family. And it's just the most amazing thing, because when I looked through, all these years later, they just did the most wonderful thing. And, you know, my mother just never got over it. She just said it's just extraordinary what... what the whole of NZ did for us. LONESOME MUSIC The loss of the Kaka is a tragic yet intriguing story, and having heard these accounts of profound loss, it's hard not to be affected yourself. As a final tribute, I'm climbing up to the site of the crash. It's cold and windy, but unlike the day of the accident, visibility is good. I'm standing at 6000ft, which is the cruising altitude of the Kaka. Around the peaks and ridges it would have come, straight in line with my eyeline here and pushing itself straight towards the ridge, that craggy ridge on the skyline over there. Suddenly, they hit the rock face,... and then silence. LONESOME MUSIC CONTINUES The wreck of the Kaka, of course, was never removed from the mountain, and over the decades, the combined weight of snow and, of course, avalanches and rock and snowmelt pushed and crushed the aircraft and the aircraft debris into the valleys, into the ravines, and it's slowly working its way down into the waterways ` a silent testimony, if you like, to what happened back in 1948. At the time, it was the worst civil aviation accident in NZ. Now, almost 70 years later, the 13 victims of that doomed flight will never be forgotten. Captions by Faith Hamblyn. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015