Sabotage Alleged Catalina

Explosion Case

AFTER two days in the Sydney City Coroner’s Court, the inquiry into the explosion on a Qantas Catalina at Rose Bay, Sydney, in the early hours of August 27, was adjourned until February 16.

Bryan Wills Monkton, managing direc tor of Trans Oceanic Airways, was in Court charged with maliciously causing damage (estimated at £24,000) to the flying-boat.

Monkton was charged in the Sydney Central Court on October 12 and re manded until December 7. Application for a further remand, until February 7, was then asked for by the Police Prose cutor on the grounds that a Crown wit ness, unnamed, would not be available until then.

In the Coroner’s Court on February 8, the police witness was revealed as Douglas Bennington Lindsay, business manager of the Peninsula Hotel, Hong kong, and previously, between March, 1947, and about mid-1949, business manager of Trans Oceanic Airways, in Sydney.

Lindsay said that about 20 months ago while he and Monkton were at Rose Bay, Monkton said that they (TOA) must do something to get rid of the Qantas op position on Lord Howe run. Lindsay said that Monkton said to him: “If you will stand guard at Rose Bay one night I will go out in a dinghy and\ enter the Catalina. I will break the glass tube of the flow meter and the petrol will flow on the floor. Then I will set one of the machine flame floats, and you know how they work. When the water comes up and sets the flame flow off, igniting the petrol and fumes, I will go out in a dinghy and puncture a fair-size hole in the boat beneath the water-line.”

LINDSAY said that he had told Monkton that it was “an idea” but that neither of them would gain by it. Some time later Monkton again ap proached him with the idea of getting rid of a Qantas Catalina. He was not sure whether he was serious or not.

Cross-examined by Mr. J. W. Shand, KC (for Monkton), he said that resigned from the TOA board in Novem ber, 1948, and thereafter was not friendly with Monkton. He was in Hongkong when he first heard that a reward had been offered for evidence leading to the discovery of the person or persons who damaged the Catalina. The reward had not induced him to come to Sydney.

Giving evidence on February 9, the proprietor of a Rose Bay electrical goods shop, Peter Joseph Allen, said that an assistant had sold a man a six-volt bat tery a short time before the Rose Bay explosion. The man had said that he wanted to throw a spark on some oil through a Ford coil. After the explosion, Allen had given a description of the man who had bought the coil to police and said that he later identified Monkton as the man when he saw him with two detectives at the CIB on November 11.

Norman William King, a QEA super intendent in charge of Rose Bay Flying Base, said that a coxswain had found an alarm clock, a six-volt battery and a Ford coil wired together and mounted on a small board in the wreckage of the Cata lina after the explosion. The device cmiM have ignited petrol and caused the explosion.

Jack Vernon Yeaman, who had been employed as a shop assistant in a hard ware store in Rose Bay before the Cata lina explosion, said that he had sold ail

alarm clock similar to the one found on the Thursday before the explosion. A man had come into the shop and said he wanted a clock that was very accurate as he wanted to wire it to a battery to set off some apparatus. Yeaman had recom mended a German clock which the man had bought. When Yeaman had seen a photograph in a newspaper of the clock that was found in the wrecked aircraft he had communicated with the police.

Yeaman said that he could not identify Monkton as the man who bought the clock—Monkton “did not mean a thing to him.” The man he sold the clock to had an “ordinary” accent —not an Eng lish accent like Monkton.

King, of QEA, said that he inspected the wreckage of the Catalina with police and found that the cock on the flow meter and the fuel cock were both on when they should have been turned off.

One flow meter had the glass broken.

ON February 16 the Coroner com mitted Bryan Wills Monkton for trial at Sydney Quarter Sessions, March 1. on a charge of having maliciously damaged a Catalina at Rose Bay on August 27, 1949.

Monkton nleaded not guilty and re served his defence.