§ Mr. Rankinasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the second German inquiry into the Munich air disaster has yet been concluded; if the investigation carried out by his own experts is now available; and whether both reports have come to the same conclusion that the accident was caused by slush on the runway.
§ Mr. J. P. W. MallalieuThe report of the German inquiry and the memorandum by the Royal Aircraft Establishment on "The Application of the Results of the Slush Drag Tests on the Ambassador to the Accident at Munich" will be published tomorrow morning and copies will be placed in the Library. The German report states that it has not proved possible to clarify completely how the various causal factors combined to bring about the acci-496W dent but concludes that wing ice was an essential cause and that slush was a further cause. The memorandum shows that slush drag could have been the principal or even the sole cause of the failure of the aircraft to lift off; whether this is so cannot be established because of the impossibility of resolving, after such a length of time, the conflict of evidence regarding how much slush was present on the runway.