THE POST-STANDARD, SYRACUSE, N.Y.  FRIDAY, MAY 10, 1940

Luck is with State Conservation Employees in Plane

Two Uninjured As Plane Drops in Plowed Field

Man Crack up on Constantia Farm as Motor Fails

Two state conservation department employees escaped injury yesterday morning when motor trouble necessitated a forced landing in a freshly plowed field near Constantia, within sight of the highway skirting the north shore of Oneida Lake.

The occupants of the department's three-place cabin plane, the undercarriage of which was wrecked and the propeller damaged, were Pilot Fred McLane of Albany, and William Winters of Glens Falls, a district game protector.

Seeking Illegal Nets

A conservation department spokesman in Albany said the men were patrolling for illegal nets on the Oneida Lake pike beds when the motor failed, with the ship flying in a northwesterly direction only a few hundred feet above the water.

Banking sharply to the right, McLane had only a fleeting second to catch a glimpse of an emergency landing field.  He spotted the plowed lot on the farm of Harold Monzein, in which Monzein was working with a team of horses and a disc harrow.

Altho the ship was losing altitude rapidly as it neared the field, McLane jockeyed the machine sufficiently to clear the farm buildings before setting it down in the muddy lot.

As the wheels struck the soft earth the undercarriage folded up with the plane sliding along a short distance on the bottom of the fuselage before coming to a stop about 1,000 feet north of the roadway.

Just Missed Better Field

Monzein said the airplane seemed to "just miss my head and the horses" as it landed in the field only 50 feet beyond was a sodded hay field in which the ship might have been brought down in McLane had more altitude.

McLane and Winters were reticent to discuss the crackup, and immediately made arrangements with the farm owner for use of a stoneboat and three horses to drag the plane from the field to near the Monzein buildings.

A number of persons soon congregated around the airplane, and after the propeller and damaged undercarriage had been removed, lifted the ship so the stoneboat could be shoved underneath the fuselage.

Dismantle Ship

Once the airplane had been hauled to higher ground, McLane, Winters and other conservation department employees began dismantling the ship.  The parts were to be trucked into the Syracuse airport for an investigation of the accident, a department spokesman said.

Robert G. Elliott of Thompson Rd., East Syracuse RD 3, engaged in a geological survey of Oneida Lake area for the department of Interior, said he was working on a point near Sunset Bay, just east of Constantia, about 10:30 a.m. when he noticed the plane flying northwest.

Estimating the ship was about 500 feet above the lake, Elliott said the motor "suddenly cut out" when right above him.  Then the plane was banked toward the north to come down in the Monzein field.

No Other Choice

Elliott related gasoline from the ship's tank was sloshing onto the wings when he reached the crackup, but that both McLane and Winters were out of the plane.  He declared McLane had no other choice than to "pick that field."

At the Syracuse airport it was learned McLane landed at the port yesterday morning to pick up Winters for the trip over Oneida Lake in search of illegal nets.  McLane has been flying the conservation departments plane several years being knows as an excellent pilot."

Sgt. Lawrence Fox of the Sylvan Beach substation of Troop D, state police, investigated the accident.  The bottom of the cabin ship was said to have been damaged from the tail about to the midsection, but the wings showed no apparent damage.