The story of Keith Sapsford, although has become part of today’s history, is a tragic one. The promising life of a teenage boy was lost in a struggle to escape being confined to a place of little or no communication with friends and family.
Keith was an Australian stowaway young boy with helpless wanderlust. He was filled with a daring spirit to explore his world, but somehow felt grounded by parents’ rules; of which if he had listened, maybe, just maybe, would have been here to achieve greater things of life and appear in a Hall of Fame before his sorrowfully sudden death.
Keith Sapsford’s Earlier Life: The Stowaway who fell from a flying aircraft.
In his early life, Keith loved travelling and had this strange sort of adventurous spirit to want to climb almost anything. And this had begun since his father, Charles Sapsford, narrated to him a story of a Spanish boy who lost his life while climbing into the undercarriage of an aircraft.
Since his father’s narration, Keith got restless and daily saw himself being everywhere in the world. He would no longer concentrate on his studies and secretly planned to leave school. (3)
However, much as his father was a lecturer with a little amount of time for travelling, due to his studies and further academic research activities, yet Mr. Charles Sapsford would occasionally make arrangements to go on a vacation with his family including Keith.
The Tragic fall that Took the Life of Keith: The Australian Stowaway
It was on February 20, 1970, that Keith Sapsford, a 14-year-old Australian teenager, entered Sydney Airport and hid himself in the wheel well of a plane bound for Japan to escape going to a Roman Catholic School in Sydney Known as Boy’s Town.
Being the son of a devout Catholic family, Keith did know that he was not going to be allowed by his parents to quit, even though he had wanted to quit Boy’s Town.
So, knowing that they would send him back, he made up his mind to leave Australia. He arrived at the Sydney airport and went into the runway.
As a young man, full of curiosity, Keith Sapsford saw this as an adventure to explore the impossible and satisfy his helpless daring spirit.
Then tragically, not long after takeoff, he fell 200 feet into the unending space.
Yes! For John Gilpin, this distressing moment was a coincidence as he unknowingly captured Keith Sapsford. John was an amateur photographer, who was testing his new camera lens at the airport; and had taken this poignant photo just before the occurrence of this debacle.
Evidence of His Death: What his father Thought and What the Aviation Authority Found:
Charles Sapsford believed that, after the plane took off, Keith might have been crushed by the wheels at high flying altitude. And a published research by the U.S Federal Aviation Authority revealed that at least one in four stowaways may survive such height as 33000 and 42,000 feet (Cruising altitude).
This tragic loss, however, was a lifetime hunting experience for his family. The nightmare, such that had lived with his both parents, Charles and Helen, for over 40 years until they passed. This year, 2023 is 53 years and 19,345 days after Keith Sapsford’s death. (3)
What’s Wheel Well?
Aircrafts with retractable landing gears have wheel wells that go into the wheels that after getting off the ground, the tires go into the wheel wells. The science behind this is that it helps the aircraft consume less fuel, and gives it less drag.
