British European Airways Flight 609

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British European Airways Flight 609
Accident summary
Accident type Overshooting the runway
place Munich-Riem , Germany
GermanyGermany 
date February 6, 1958
Fatalities 23
Survivors 21st
Injured 21st
Aircraft
Aircraft type Airspeed AS 57
operator United KingdomUnited Kingdom British European Airways
Mark G-ALZU
Passengers 40
crew 4th
Lists of aviation accidents
Airspeed Ambassador, 1965

British European Airways Flight 609 was a charter flight of the British European Airways on February 6, 1958 by Belgrade via Munich to Manchester . After the refueling stop in Munich, the aircraft came off the runway on the third attempt to take off and exploded. Among the passengers on the Airspeed Ambassador G-ALZU (“ Lord Burghley ”) of the “Elizabethan” type were the Manchester United football team, as well as accompanying staff, fans and sports journalists. Of 44 people on board, 23 were killed and the other 21 injured. In the English-speaking world, the accident is best known as Munich Air Disaster or Munich Air Crash .

procedure

After the scheduled refueling stop at Munich-Riem Airport , flight captain James Thain and copilot Ken Rayment noticed irregular boost pressure in both engines during the first two take-off attempts and broke off both take-off attempts. The passengers were then asked to leave the plane and go to the airport lounge. Just 15 minutes later, however, they were brought back to the aircraft, as the two pilots had decided to make one last attempt at take-off without readjusting the engines.

At 15:03 (UTC), the aircraft rolled onto the runway again with the engines running smoothly. After a speed of 117  kn (217  km / h ) had been reached at which a take- off could no longer be safely aborted because there was no remaining braking distance , the aircraft's speed suddenly dropped to 105 kn (194 km / h). 119 kn would have been required for a safe start. Because the speed was too low to take off, the AS 57 shot over the runway, broke through the boundary fence of the airport and grazed a nearby residential building with its left wing. In this collision, the wing with the tail was torn off from the rest of the aircraft and the house caught fire - the resident and her three children survived.

In the further course the cockpit crashed into a tree and the starboard side of the hull crashed into a wooden garage in which gasoline and tires were stored in addition to a truck. The impact caused an explosion.

Harry Gregg , goalkeeper of the Northern Irish national soccer team , rescued Vera Lukić, the pregnant wife of a Yugoslav diplomat, and her daughter from the machine and then dragged his teammates Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet , who were lying motionless in the slush, away from the machine before it exploded .

backgrounds

The Manchester United team were known in their homeland as "Busby Babes", a reference to their coach Matt Busby and the unusually low average age of the players.

The European national championship competition in club football was held for the first time in the 1955/56 season - without English participation. A year later, then took Manchester United to the 1956-57 European Cup in part, immediately reached the semi-finals and failed there to eventual winners Real Madrid . Also in the season 1957/58 , the team that had won the English championship again, took part in the European Cup. Manchester were among the favorites to win the ever-growing competition. The domestic league games were played on a Saturday and the European Cup games took place within the week. Although air travel was considered risky at the time, this mode of transport was the only practical solution with which the “Busby Babes” could combine both tasks. During a game against Athletic Bilbao , the players had already experienced firsthand the adversity that aviation had to face. The kickers had to free the wings of the two chartered aircraft from the ice themselves in order to make them airworthy.

The club had chartered a plane that was supposed to bring the team back to Manchester after the successful quarter-final second leg at the Yugoslav club Red Star Belgrade (United won 3: 3 with a total of 5: 4 goals on the return leg). The departure from Belgrade was one hour late -  Johnny Berry had misplaced his passport . The machine made a stopover in Munich for the purpose of refueling.

Impact for Manchester United

Commemorative plaque at Old Trafford

Seven of the players died immediately in the collision, Duncan Edwards succumbed to his injuries on February 21 in Munich's Klinikum rechts der Isar , where the survivors were cared for by a team led by Georg Maurer . Johnny Berry and Jackie Blanchflower were injured so badly that they could never play again. Matt Busby was badly injured and hospitalized for two months, and received two anointings of the sick before he recovered .

Although there was already public speculation about the end of the club, the weakened team played the 1957/58 season to an end. Assistant coach Jimmy Murphy , who had not traveled to Belgrade because he was in charge of the Welsh national team at the same time , stepped in as head coach and put together a team that consisted mainly of substitutes and youth players. This United side defeated Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the last 16 of the FA Cup in their first game after the disaster on February 18 . In the stadium booklet for the match, the exact places where the United players were normally listed were filled with empty space.

In the league, Manchester United won only one game after the accident this season, which slipped them from third to ninth place in the table. Nevertheless, they reached the final of the FA Cup, where they lost 2-0 to Bolton Wanderers . Matt Busby resumed training the following season and eventually created a second generation of Busby Babes, including George Best and Denis Law , who won European Cups a decade after the accident along with survivors Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes .

responsibility

News recordings of the accident

After human error on the part of the captain had been identified as the cause of the catastrophe, it was later determined during the reconstruction that it was rather the slush at the end of the runway that caused a slowdown and prevented the safe take-off speed from being reached. This meant that on the one hand the aircraft was too slow to take off, but on the other hand it no longer had the necessary space on the runway to abort the take-off run. While tail-wheel landing gear planes do not usually have major problems with muddy surfaces due to their geometric properties in relation to the center of gravity , newer types such as the Ambassador with a nose wheel landing gear (one nose wheel in front and main wheels behind the center of gravity) have been considered vulnerable. This subsequently led to a discussion about the permissible amounts of snow on the runways.

Despite this result, the airport administration, which was responsible for the condition of the runway but was not aware of the danger of slush for planes like the Ambassador, made the surviving Captain Thain responsible for the accident. He was reproached for not having the wings of the machine de-iced and therefore the responsibility lay with him alone. Although witnesses contradicted this thesis, the version of the German authorities was based on a photograph published in numerous newspapers, which appeared to show snow on the wing. But when the negatives of the photo were examined, neither ice nor snow could be found on them. The investigation into Thain continued until 1968 before he was finally fully acquitted of the allegations. As the official cause of the accident, the British authorities finally gave the amount of melting snow on the runway that prevented the Elizabethan from reaching the required take-off speed. Thain, who had been fired from the BEA shortly after the accident and could no longer return to his job, withdrew and devoted himself to his poultry farm in Berkshire . He died of a heart attack in 1975 at the age of 54 .

Commemoration

Memorial stone in the Trudering district of Munich
Commemorative clock in front of Old Trafford

In 2004, the city of Munich erected a memorial stone at the crash site ⊙ in the Trudering district that shows a football field with the names of the victims. The memorial stone was designed and financed by Manchester United. The plaque on the stone is similar to the one on the Old Trafford stadium in Manchester . The square was named Manchester Square on April 28, 2008 on the 50th anniversary of the accident in memory of the victims .

Manchester-born singer Morrissey released Munich Air Disaster in 2004 , 1958 on the B-side of the single Irish Blood, English Heart .

Fatalities

Manchester United player

More victims

Survivors

Manchester United player

Other survivors

  • Matt Busby - Manchester United manager († 1994)
  • Frank Taylor - Journalist († 2002)
  • James Thain - flight captain († 1975)
  • George (Bill) Rodgers - radio officer († 1997)
  • Peter Howard - Photographer († 1996)
  • Margaret Bellis - flight attendant († 1990s)
  • Ted Ellyard - photographer
  • Vera Lukić and daughter Venona - passengers
  • Mrs. Miklos - wife of Bela Miklos
  • Bato Tomašević - diplomat († 2017).

See also

Aircraft accidents that have affected entire sports teams in the past include:

literature

  • Ulrich von Berg: Of Babes and Angels. In: 11 friends . No. 75, February 2008, pp. 32-49.
  • Michael Crick: Manchester United. The Betrayal of a Legend. Pan Books, London 1990, ISBN 0-330-31440-8 .
  • Stanley Stewart: Air disasters that moved the world. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1989, ISBN 3-7637-5859-3 .

filming

Directed by James Strong, the disaster with the consequences for the survivors and Manchester United was brought to the screen in the film " United " (Great Britain, 2011).

Web links

Commons : British-European-Airways-Flight 609  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Accident report Airspeed Ambassador G-ALZU , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on November 25, 2019.
  2. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung - WM Library The Football World Championships - 1958 Sweden, pp. 39–41
  3. ↑ The Manchester United memorial stone in the monuments list of the state capital Munich
  4. ↑ Article in SZ Online Münchner Strasseennamen - From Stachus to Manchesterplatz, page 3, accessed on December 6, 2010
  5. ↑ Irish Blood, English Heart (single) . Amazon.com. Retrieved October 11, 2008.
  6. ↑ Gregg's 'greatest save' - Munich remembered. It was the greatest save he ever made. In: BBC News. February 4, 2008, accessed January 28, 2016 .