Superga plane crash

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Superga plane crash
Fiat G.212 I-ELCE tragedia Superga.jpg

Accident summary
Accident type controlled flight into terrain
place Superga
date May 4, 1949
Fatalities 31
Survivors 0
Injured 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type Fiat G.212
operator ItalyItaly Avio Linee Italiane
Mark I-ELCE
Passengers 27
crew 4th
Lists of aviation accidents

The plane crash of Superga (Italian Tragedia di Superga ) was the crash of a Fiat G.212 aircraft on May 4, 1949 on the Turin pilgrimage mountain Superga . In the accident, all inmates died, including the professional team of the AC Turin football club , which was then considered the best in Italy .

crash

Fiat G.212
Memorial plaque to the victims of the plane crash on an outer wall of the
Superga basilica

The flight home from the friendly match, to which all players except Renato Gandolfi , Luigi Giuliano and Sauro Tomà had traveled, started in Lisbon at 09:52 local time. After a stopover to refuel in Barcelona , the flight to Turin continued.

The weather in the Turin area was bad, visibility at Torino-Aeritalia airport was 1200 m with a closed cloud cover at 400 m height. In the area of ​​the 675 m high hill of Superga there was thick fog with a visibility of 40 m. The cockpit crew reported an altitude of 2000 m above Savona and began to land on Turin. During the descent, the Fiat G.212 collided with the Superga basilica on the top of the hill at around 5:05 p.m.

In addition to the bad weather conditions, inadequate radio equipment and errors in flight navigation were blamed for the crash .

The players of the Grande Torino were revered as national heroes in Italy during their lifetime. According to reports from the time, the funeral procession through Turin was accompanied by around half a million people.

Il Grande Torino

A team formed at AC Turin in the early 1940s around greats like Valentino Mazzola and Aldo Olivieri , which went down in history as Grande Torino . The Turin won the Italian championship five times in a row from 1942/43 to 1948/49 . In the six years before the Superga disaster, the Grande Torino did not lose any of its 93 home games at Stadio Filadelfia . In 1947 ten players from AC Turin, the home club of national coach Vittorio Pozzo , were set up for an international match against Hungary . The eleventh was goalkeeper Lucidio Sentimenti , who came from Juventus Turin. The AC Turin of the 1940s was characterized above all by the purchasing policy of President Ferruccio Novo . He first signed Romeo Menti and Guglielmo Gabetto in 1941 , before buying the best Italian playmaker of the time, Valentino Mazzola, and Ezio Loik , a midfielder, turned a very good team into an almost unbeatable one. The Grande Torino mostly played in the World Cup system , which was almost unknown in Italy at the time. This meant that the midfield was quickly bridged from a safe defense and many goals were scored through a strong attack. So it came about that the players around Valentino Mazzola scored 125 goals in 40 games in the 1947/48 season . In the 1948/49 season , the team secured the championship with a 1-1 draw against Bari five game days before the end of the season, which prompted the president to arrange a friendly game in Lisbon .

Consequences for AC Turin

For AC Turin, the death of Grande Torino also meant the end of a streak of success that had lasted for almost a decade. In 1949 the club won what was, for a long time, its last championship title after the season was played to the end by the youth team. At the first home game after Superga the Stadio Filadelfia was filled to the last seat. After the Superga tragedy, AC Turin could not return to the successful times in the 40s. In the 1958/59 season , the team rose to Serie B , but was able to rise again. The last championship to date was celebrated by AC Turin in the 1975/76 season . In the following years, the club has been moving between Serie A and Serie B and is now called FC Turin . The last successes were winning the Coppa Italia 1992/93 and the Mitropa Cup in 1991.

Victim

AC Turin player

Club officials

Journalists

  • Renato Casalbore
  • Luigi Cavallero
  • Renato Tosatti

Other

  • 4 crew members
  • 1 interpreter

See also

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

Web links

Commons : Superga plane crash  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Aircraft accident data and report in the Aviation Safety Network (English)
  2. Tragedy of the AC Turin - How the pride of Italy shattered on a mountain. Spiegel Online , May 4, 2009, accessed April 10, 2010 .