Aer Lingus flight 712

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Aer Lingus flight 712
Aer Lingus Viscount 808 Manchester 1963.jpg

An Aer Lingus Vickers Viscount (comparative model)
Accident summary
Accident type Structural failure in flight
place near Wexford , Ireland
date March 24, 1968
Fatalities 61
Survivors 0
Injured 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type Vickers Viscount 803
operator Aer Lingus
Mark EI-AOM
Surname St. Phelim
Departure airport Cork Airport
Destination airport London Heathrow Airport
Passengers 57
crew 4th
Lists of aviation accidents

Aer Lingus flight 712 was the flight number of a scheduled flight of the Irish airline Aer Lingus from Cork to London , which ended in a crash on March 24, 1968 for unknown reasons. All 61 inmates were killed in the accident. In Ireland, the crash is often referred to as Tragedy at Tuskar Rock ( Tragedy on Tuskar Rock ).

The accident

the accident

The Vickers Viscount 803 machine with the name “St. Phelim ”took off from Cork Airport at 11:32 am local time and should have landed at London Heathrow Airport at 12:48 pm local time . The weather forecast predicted cloud cover, no adverse conditions for flying were expected.

The last regular radio message, a position report, was received at 11:56 a.m. At 11:57 a.m., a garbled message reached the tower at Heathrow that the plane was in a tailspin . The machine fell from a height of 17,000 ft (about 5180 m) in the vicinity of the Irish County Wexford belonging Tuskar rock into the sea. A few minutes after the radio message, a search and rescue operation was started, in which two frigates and various other ships of the Royal Navy and an Avro Shackleton of the Royal Air Force took part. In addition, a message was sent to all merchant ships in the vicinity via the coast station Land's End Radio (GLD). A helicopter was dispatched from Ireland. Objects floating in the water could be seen by the arriving aircraft, but no survivors were found.

Determination of causes

At the time of the crash, the aircraft involved in the accident had completed around 18,800 flight hours. The 35-year-old flight captain had been with Aer Lingus since 1956. He had a total of 6,683 flight hours, 1,679 of them on this type. His 22-year-old copilot had a total of 1,139 flight hours, 900 of them on Vickers Viscount aircraft.

The recordings of the radio messages made in the Tower at Heathrow were tapped one day after the accident. Based on the analysis, the mutilated radio message at 11:57 a.m. could be clearly assigned to the missing aircraft. Even at this point in time, an engine failure or a collision was ruled out as a cause of the accident. The following day the first bodies and debris from the aircraft were recovered and brought to Wexford by the frigate HMS Hardy . The bodies found were all wearing life jackets.

As early as three days after the crash, there was speculation about a structural failure of the aircraft, as some debris was found far away from the actual site of the accident. The investigative commission therefore decided to salvage the debris lying in the sea, as this should provide information about the cause of the accident. This appeared possible at a water depth of 255 ft (78 m). In the course of the rescue operations, about 60 percent of the wreck was recovered by divers.

The investigation into the cause of the accident lasted over two years, but the cause of the crash could not be determined.

Rumors about the cause of the crash

It was rumored for decades that the plane had been shot down by a British test missile. Within the parish of Aberporth in west Wales , and along the flight route opposite the Irish bank, was the most modern missile test site of the British military at that time.

In the years after the crash, a number of witnesses came forward to confirm what is known as the "rocket theory". These people included a crew member of the British frigate HMS Penelope , who claimed that wreckage that had been picked up by the HMS Penelope had been secretly brought to Britain.

Re-examination in 2002

In 2002 a re-examination by the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) revealed that Aer Lingus maintenance records for a routine inspection carried out in December 1967 in 1968 could not be found. Rather, the authority carried out investigations into the maintenance intervals and books of the Vickers Viscount EI-AOM after the accident . She focused on defects on the aircraft that were entered in the maintenance documents. However, these investigations were missing in the final report on the plane crash in 1970. The Irish government then set up a new commission of inquiry, which finally came to the conclusion that the crash was a chain of unfortunate circumstances. The cause was a failure of the left elevator , triggered either by material fatigue , corrosion , flutter or bird strike , whereby the flutter-induced material fatigue of the control rod of the trim rudder is given as the most likely reason.

A Fouga Magister (comparison model)

In March 2007, a retired RAF officer who was himself a chief flight instructor at RAF Little Rissington Base claimed that the crash was caused by a collision between the Vickers Viscount and a French-style Irish Air Force aircraft that was training in the airspace. He has evidence that a Fouga Magister training aircraft collided with the Aer Lingus machine. The Fouga Magister had answered the call for help to check the landing gear of the Viscount, which had not locked properly. While all occupants of flight 712 were killed in the crash that followed, the two occupants of the Fouga Magister survived the accident by using the ejection seats. The French and Irish authorities then agreed to cover up the facts, but the wreck of the Fouga Magister must still be found at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Wexford.

These claims are contradicted by Captain Mike Reynolds. Reynolds is a retired skipper, pilot's license holder, and author of the book Tragedy at Tuskar Rock , published in 2003.

A member of the investigation committee confirms the statements in the investigation report from 2002, according to which French and Australian experts ruled out the possibility that the Viscount collided with another aircraft or was hit by a missile. The international investigation came to the conclusion that the cause of the accident was a structural failure caused by material fatigue, corrosion, flutter or bird strikes.

A spokesman for the Irish Armed Forces described the allegations made by the retired RAF man as false, saying there was no evidence that an Irish Air Force machine was nearby at the time of the disaster. Rather, the Fouga Magister was not put into service by the Irish Air Force before 1976. However, he could not explain why Annex 5.2.g of the investigation report lists a Fouga Magister in the aircraft roll for the year 1968 of the Irish Air Force.

literature

  • Mike Reynolds: Tragedy at Tuskar Rock . Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 2003, ISBN 0-7171-3619-1 .
  • David Gero: Aviation disasters: Accidents with passenger aircraft since 1950. , 1st edition. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01580-3 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ a b c The Times: Lost In Airliner Off Welsh Coast After 'Spinning' Call , March 25, 1968; Page 1; Edition 57209
  2. ↑ a b c David Gero: Aviation disasters: Accidents with passenger aircraft since 1950 . 1st edition. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01580-3 .
  3. ↑ a b The Times: Recording of last seconds by Arthur Reed, March 25, 1968; Page 1; Edition 57209
  4. ^ Air Accident Investigation Unit report ( Memento of February 25, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), The report of the commission of inquiry
  5. ^ The Times: First bodies of air crash victims are brought ashore by Julian Mounter, March 26, 1968; Page 1; Edition 57210
  6. ↑ The Times: Waves Scatter Crash Clues - Airliner's last moments , March 27, 1968; Page 4; Edition 57211
  7. ^ The Times: Viscount salvage attempt today July 22, 1968; Page 2; Edition 57309
  8. ^ John Mullin: Did British missile hit Flight 712? . January 1, 1999. Retrieved June 4, 2009. 
  9. ↑ Paul Lashmar: For 30 years, the RAF has been Suspected of Causing Ireland's worst air disaster. Until ... now . March 16, 2000. Retrieved June 4, 2009. 
  10. ^ Irish air crash report due . April 19, 2000. Retrieved June 4, 2009. 
  11. ↑ a b c d Lorna Siggins: Tuskar Rock crash caused by collision - RAF man . March 3, 2007. Accessed June 4, 2009. 

Coordinates: 52 ° 11 ′ 20.7 ″  N , 6 ° 10 ′ 52.3 ″  W ,