CRASH OF A QANTAS DE HAVILLAND DH-86 AIRCRAFT
AT THE FOOT OF MOUNT PETRIE,
NEAR BRISBANE, QLD
ON 20 FEBRUARY 1942

On the 20 February 1942, the day after the large Japanese air raid on Darwin, a Qantas de Havilland DH-86, VH-USE, "Sydney", was scheduled to take off at 06:30 am. After some delays it finally took off from Archerfield airfield at 8:30am and flew over The Redlands area on a trip to Darwin via Mount Isa with seven wartime priority passengers. It apparently developed some structural problems. It was raining at the time, with low cloud and poor visibility.

Only a few minutes later news was telephoned to the airport that the aircraft had plunged out of control from heavy cloud, crashing vertically to destruction amongst trees on the slopes of Mount Petrie near Belmont on the outskirts of Brisbane. All on board were killed instantly.

Tom Blunt and his father at the Redlands heard the noise of the aircraft and went out to investigate. They saw a four-engined aircraft hurtling towards the ground. They initially thought it was headed for their house but it then seemed to straighten up and turned back towards Archerfield airfield. Half a minute later they heard a dull thump as the aircraft slammed into the foot of Mount Petrie. Mr. Blunt walked straight to the crash site with the aid of a compass. Everyone on board was killed which included the crew of two and seven passengers which included one American soldier and one Australian RAAF officer.

Photographs of the wreckage of VH-USE. The young
fellow in the foreground is Alan Close's father

With the country's pre-occupation with the bombing of Darwin the accident was largely overlooked. One source indicated that when the investigators from Department of Civil Aviation Head Office in Melbourne arrived late the next day it was found that the wreck had been deliberately burnt on the authority of local DCA staff about 8 hours after the crash. John Lovett told me that the wreckage had not been burnt on site but had been removed from the site. Metal fittings had been cut from the wreckage with axes and taken to Archerfield airfield. Apparently the site was covered in oil, petrol and battery acid after the crash.

Several portions of VH-USE's fin were found almost a mile from the crash site on Mr. T. R. Blunt's property. Clearly it had been detached from the fuselage in the air. When one of the investigations from the south, John Watkins, arrived the following day, Mr. T.R. Blunt produced a few more pieces of the fin that he had found. This then meant that almost three quarters of the fin had been found quite some distance from the main wreckage of the aircraft. The subsequent official inquiry into the loss was inconclusive.

This aircraft was registered on the 22 January 1935 and named "R.M.A. Sydney". It was struck off the register in March 1942.

Initially I was not able to find the names of the two military personnel killed in the crash. I did a search of the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour Database to see who may have been killed in accidents on 20 February 1942 and came up with the following two military personnel. Note that one entry states that the person was killed in Australia so neither could be confirmed as being involved in this crash:-

My initial guess was that the RAAF Officer on board was Flight Lieutenant Philip Montague James and the American soldier was a Captain Baron Brodine as Barbara Spann had told me that her father had been killed in an aircraft crash in Brisbane on that same day. However I was advised by John Godfrey of the Belmont and Districts Historical Society on 17 July 2005 that the American killed in this crash was 2nd Lt. Herbert Hughes Hayden (from Los Angeles) who was based in the Rockhampton area. His body was embalmed and was buried at Lutwyche Cemetery in Brisbane. He was eating an orange at the time of the crash as it was still found in his mouth. His mother Mrs G.R. Hayden, was living at 512 North Irving Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA at the time of her son's death. (I would like to make contact with any members of the Hayden family). Mrs Hayden wrote to the Blunt family after the war. 2nd Lt Hayden's body was exhumed and returned to Hawaii and was buried as follows:-

There were a total of fifteen DH-86 aircraft operated in Australia. VH-URN was lost in Bass Strait in 1934; VH-USG lost near Longreach on delivery flight in 1934. VH-URT was lost near Flinders Island in 1935 as well as VH-USE. The design and construction of the DH-86 was completed in the near impossible duration of 4 months. The design was initially flawed and the British should never have issued the initial Certificate of Airworthiness. When Australia lost the first DH-86 Britain denied there was a problem. Australians did their best to overcome the problems without assistance from De Havilland's or the British Air Ministry. It was only after the sixth loss of a British registered DH86 in 1936 that the Air Ministry took decisive action which resulted in the DH86B which solved most if not all the handling & stability problems. Aeroplane Monthly of April 1984 tells the unflattering story.

9 KILLED IN AIR LINER CRASH NEAR BELMONT

Nine Persons, including one woman, were killed when a DH86 aircraft crashed in the Belmont district this morning. Among the victims were men well-known in the pastoral industry.

The machine, a civil aircraft, was owned by Qantas Empire Airways Ltd., and had left Archerfield at 8:30am bound for Longreach, via Roma.

The nine persons killed including seven passengers and two members of the crew.

Among the passengers killed were:-

MR & MRS C.T. SECCOMBE, of Longreach;
Mr. J.L. STEWART, whose address was given as care Mr. McNeish, Brisbane;
Mr. R.B. REID, care Goldsbrough Mort, Brisbane;
Mr. J.J. ANDERSON, Kadanga Avenue, Ashgrove.

Members of the crew were:-

CAPTAIN C.H.C. SWAFFIELD, first pilot of plane, Wharton Road, Moorooka;
CHIEF OFFICER MARSHALL, Eagle Terrace, Sandgate.

Residents of the Belmont district saw the machine losing height, and later heard a crash.

They organised a search party, and early this afternoon the wrecked aircraft was located in forest country, about four miles from the Belmont Post Office. All of the occupants, were dead when the searchers arrived.

When the machine crashed it did not catch fire. The search party had to traverse two and a half miles of heavily timbered country before it found the wreckage of the plane.

3-Hour Search in Rugged Hills before Wrecked Plane Found

Scouring the rugged hills of the Belmont district, a search party of about 50 men, including police, army men, and local farmers, split up into several small bands, and it was three hours before they located the wreckage of the air liner which crashed this morning.

The searchers were hampered by dense scrub, which in most parts limited visibility to less than 100 yards. The climbing of the colony of mountains between the Old Cleveland Road at Belmont and Mount Gravatt was difficult. Several of the searchers themselves, unable to keep up with their comrades, were lost for a time, but frequent blasts on motor horns guided them back.

The machine, a De Haviland 86 was reduced to a crumpled mass of debris, and parts of the tail assembly and one of the heavy landing wheels were strewn over the neighbourhood about 50 yards away from the main wreckage.

Victims of Crash

Mr. J.J. Anderson, one of the victims of the smash, was known throughout Australia as one of the principals of Anco Meat Company, wholesale and meat exporters of Brisbane. It was a stroke of misfortune that he came to be on the aeroplane to-day. He had booked to leave for the central west last week, but he was unable to secure a seat until this morning. He was beginning a buying tour in the central-western districts on behalf of his firm.

Mr. J.L. Stewart, who came from Perth, was Australian general manager for the owners of Northampton Downs and Alice Downs in the Blackall district. He was flying to Blackall to be present at Northampton Downs during shearing, and to inspect both properties.

Mr. and Mrs. Claude Seccombe lived at Kenya station in the Muttaburra district and were returning to their home after a holiday visit to Southport. For many years Mr. Seccombe had been prominent in Central Queensland as a keen sheep and thoroughbred horse breeder. He came to Brisbane some weeks ago to secure medical attention.

Mr. R. B. Reid was well known throughout Queensland. He was a son of the owner of Arrollah Downs in north-western Queensland, and was about 40 years old.

Captain C. H. C. Swaffield was an experienced airline pilot. He had been with Qantas for about six years, and flew the company's aircraft in many parts of the State. He made extensive flights in outback Queensland.

He gained his A class licence in Rockhampton. Selling a taxi which he operated, he bought a plane and went barnstorming. When he had sufficient flying hours, he qualified for the B class licence and joined Qantas.

John Godfrey of the Belmont and Districts Historical Society advised me on 17 July 2005 that a Memorial Ceremony was being held at 2:00 pm on 31 July 2005 at the Carindale Shopping Centre to dedicate a memorial plaque to remember those who were tragically killed in this accident. Unfortunately this memorial was dismantled a few years later during an expansion program at Carindale Shopping Centre and now it would appear that nobody knows what happened to the plaque.

I was contacted by Mandy Hensel, the grand daughter of John Lyall Stewart on the 25 June 2008. Mandy told me that John Lyall Stewart was a well known station owner and manager in north west Australia and a keen horseman and race horse owner.

Many years ago, John Lovett believed he had pinpointed the approximate location of the crash based on the map used in the inquest and matching the locations from photographs taken of the wreckage. John used a metal detector to try to pinpoint the exact location but was unsuccessful.

Metal detectorist Fred Wimmer located the main crash site on 13 May 2023. He had used a 1946 aerial photo to identify a cleared patch that could be seen on the photo in the general search area. On accessing the area, there was nothing to be seen except a small piece of foam sticking up out of the ground. Using his metal detector in that location revealed multiple targets which turned out to be parts of the crashed aircraft.

Fred Wimmer contacted Aviation Historical Society of Australia Inc. member Mark Pilkington in Melbourne who was able to identify the aircraft parts a coming from a de Havilland aircraft. Fred then contacted me on 27 May 2023 to advise what he had found. Fred invited me to the site to see if we could confirm it was the crash site of VH-USE. I am the founding Secretary of the Aviation Historical Society of Australia (Qld) Inc.

I went to site with Fred Wimmer and Warren McGrath on 3 June 2023. We parked on Prout Road, Burbank near the track that led most of the way to the crash site. After a short 8 minute walk we had reached the crash site. Fred lent me one of his metal detectors. He showed me how to use it and I swung it a few times and immediately found a possible target. I then located a small rectangular piece of brass just below the surface. It was covered in dirt. As I cleaned the dirt off the piece of brass, the name �L. S. Marshall� appeared which sent a shiver down my spine. I immediately grabbed the printout of my web page on the crash of VH-USE that I had with me and saw that Chief Officer Lindsay Stuart Marshall had been the co-pilot on this aircraft!

The find of this brass nameplate confirmed conclusively that Fred Wimmer had indeed found the crash site of VH-USE which had been lost for around 60 years. Many people have been trying to refind this crash site over the years, including myself.

Fred told me that he had used the sketch that I have on this web page on the crash, along with a 1946 aerial photo of the area to help find the crash site. A 1946 aerial photo showed a small white scar in the bush. When he accessed the possible site based on his desktop research, Fred spotted a piece of old foam sticking up out of the ground which was possibly some foam from one of the aircraft�s seats.

Fred sent me a GPS marker for the crash site and when I compared it with the Google Earth marker that I had plotted a number of years ago, based on the best possible information that I had available to me at the time, I found that my predicted site was just 60 metres away from the actual site.

I assisted Fred Wimmer to report his finding of the crash site to the Queensland Department of Environment and Science (DES) to comply with the requirements of Section 89 under the Queensland Heritage Act 1992 for reporting the discovery of an archaeological artefact. The Heritage Branch of DES advised that they agreed with the management activities that Fred had outlined in the Notification form and that they had no further requirements stemming from the discovery.

Fred told me that he was keen to have a plaque erected at or near the crash site. The site is only 30 metres from a walking track through the Brisbane City Council Koala Bushland at Burbank.

Mark Pilkington believes that this is a small Manufacturer�s Plate for an engine
electrical generator, ordered by and fitted for Qantas Empire Airways (QEA)

I'd like to thank Stuart Mackay, Alan Close, Grahame Higgs, Chris Ward, Barbara Spann, John Godfrey, John Lovett and Darryl Gibbs for their assistance with this home page.

I'd also like to thank Craig Polkinghorne for providing me with a copy of the newspaper article on the crash from The Telegraph.

I'd also like to thank Mark Pilkington, Eddie Coates and Phil Vabre for their assistance with this web page.