What did happen to the Aer Lingus ‘St. Phelim’?
61 PEOPLE DIED WHEN AN AER LINGUS PLANE TRAVELLING FROM CORK TO LONDON CRASHED AT TUSKAR ROCK ON A BRIGHT, SPRING DAY IN 1968. DAVID TUCKER EXAMINES THE THEORIES SURROUNDING THE CRASH, AND PREVIEWS THE COMMEMORATIONS IN ROSSLARE HARBOUR TO MARK THE ANNIVE
WEATHER conditions were perfect when the Aer Lingus Viscount ‘St Phelim’ left Cork on what would normally have been a short flight to London’s Heathrow Airport.
However, shortly after 12 noon on Sunday, March 24, 1968, the airliner fell from the sky and crashed into the sea off Tuskar Rock after a broken message from the crew saying the aircraft was at 12,000 feet and spinning rapidly.
All 61 of those on board, 57 passengers and four crew, died in the disaster. Only 14 bodies were recovered.
Kilmore Quay lobster fisherman John Power, who was involved in the search for the Viscount wreckage, was years later to become one of the prime movers of the memorial garden to all those who died at sea off Wexford, located close to Forlorn Point, the so-called ‘Graveyard of a Thousand Ships’.
Much of the Aer Lingus Vickers Viscount was never recovered and to this day some debris remains on the seabed. It took weeks and months to locate as well, despite the relatively small search area between County Wexford and the Welsh coast.
‘When the plane disappeared, all the fishing boats went to search the area, including my wife’s brother Billy Bates on the Glendalough,’ said John Power.
‘I had a boat called the ‘Girl Anne’, she was a 50 footer and we went searching with all the lads from Arklow to Ducannon,’ said John.
Billy Bates and his crew on the ‘Glendalough’ did find the remains of a fuselage in a search being carried out weeks after the St Phelim disappeared.
‘ The plane crashed in March and after three or four weeks we were hired to go and look for her. The area where we eventually found the plane had been previously searched by the British navy,’ said Billy, in a report carried by this newspaper on a previous anniversary of the disaster.
For many years the cause of the crash of the Viscount was rumoured to have been caused by a British missile fired from a test range at Aberporth, in Wales.
Former minister Hugh Byrne said he still believed the British military had accidentally shot down the airliner when a Cold War exercise went wrong.
‘ They (the British) sent (then ambassador) Veronica Sutherland to see me, they were very worried,’ Hugh told this newspaper.
‘And then Mary O’Rourke took it over without my knowlegde. I have to proof either way, but I still believe what happened off Tuskar Rock that day was a result of a British military training exercise and there were exercises taking place that day in Aberporth, in Wales,’ he said.
‘It was a fantastically fine morning, the pilot was as good as Aer Lingus had at the time, the flight journey time was very short and Tuskar was in the firing line of any exercises that were being carried out,’ said the former Fianna Fail minister of state.
Despite the claims, in 2002, a review process conducted by the Air Accident Investigation Unit found that Aer Lingus paperwork relating to a routine maintenance inspection carried out on the aircraft in December 1967 was missing in 1968.
A new board of investigation found that the crash was the result of a chain of events starting with a failure to the left tail-plane caused by metal fatigue, corrosion, flutter or a bird strike.
This hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theorists and in 2007, a retired British air force flying instructor, Eric Evers, claimed that the crash was caused by a collision with a French Fouga Magister aircraft training with the Air Corps, which struck the Viscount after responding to a request to check the passenger plane’s undercarrriage.
Both the French and Irish authorities colluded in a subsequent cover-up, he said at the time.
A Defence Forces spokesman described the claims as ‘spurious’ and said there was no evidence that any aircraft associated with the Air Corps was in the vicinity at the time.
Subsequent attempts to raise the main section of the fuselage failed when it broke up as it was being hauled from the seabed by a British recovery ship.
In 2008, a retired Naval engineer revived the conspiracy controversy with claims about a piece of equipment recovered following the crash.
Moss Egan was on board the LE Cliona and spent several weeks at sea, working alongside the British Navy, trying to recover the wreckage of the aircraft in 1968.
He said he recalled one discovery in particular, of something which many believe was part of a target drone, a piece of equipment used to test the accuracy of missiles Mr. Egan said that it was taken away and never seen again.
The ‘St Phelim’ had departed Cork and had been cleared to FL170 (flight level 17,000 feet) on that clear, bright Sunday morning, on March 24, 50 years ago. The crew sent out a radio message at the Bannow reporting point stating they were at FL170. They were instructed to change frequency to London Air Traffic Control.
Just eight seconds after first reporting to London ATC, a broken message was received which was later interpreted as ‘12,000 feet, descending spinning rapidly’. The Viscount descended and struck the sea 1.7 nautical miles from Tuskar Rock.
After the loss of contact, Air Traffic Control requested that Aer Lingus flight EI 362 which was heading to Bristol from Dublin divert to an area west of the Strumble to see if they could spot anything on the water. They descended to 500 feet but nothing was seen.
Soon afterwards, a full alert was sounded. HMS Hardy, a British Royal Navy frigate was the first ship to reach the possible crash area but found nothing and it wasn’t until the search resumed the following day that floating debris was sighted and over the next few days a total of 14 bodies were recovered.
The main wreckage was detected on the seabed by a trawler at a depth of 234 feet, 1.7 miles from Tuskar Rock.
Among the crew members who died in the crash was Captain Bernard ‘Barney’ O’Beirne, aged 35, who had joined Aer Lingus from the Irish Air Corps and had a total of 6,683 hours flying experience, 1,679 on the Viscount, one of the most successful and profitable of the first post-war airliners.
The First Officer was Paul Heffernan, aged 22, who had trained at Airwork Services based at Scone, Perth, Scotland and joined Aer Lingus in 1966. He had a total of 1,139 hours with 900 hours experience on the Viscount. The two members of the cabin crew were Mary Coughlan and Ann Kelly, from Wexford.
The list of passengers: - Katherine Archer, Dennis Arnold, Roger Baeck, Dr Hans Beck, Elizabeth Bryan, Hannah Burke, Michael Cowhig, William CoxIfe, Jacques Creyelman, Sheila Dann, Teresa Dann, Rory Delaney, Pierre Dreyfus, Thomas Dwane, Edmund Faveurs, Karin Gahlin, Sven Gahlin, Eileen Gallivan, Marion Gallivan, Paula Gallivan, Joseph Ganglehoff, Mary Ganglehoff, Edward Hegarty, Maura Herlihy, Max Hinderer, Eileen Jephson, Maurice Jephson, Theordor Jurgens, Anthony Long, Curt Meyer, Noel Mulcahy, Christopher McCarthy, Jeremiah McCarthy, Rita McCarthy, Neill McCormick, Dorthy Newey, Richard Nunan, John Nyhan, Edward O’Brien, Bridget O’Callaghan, Patrick O’Callaghan, James O’Halloran, Josephine O’Halloran, Nora O’Mahony, Barney O’Rourke, Nellie Quinlan, Paul Schwartz, Ann Shorten, Thomas Shorten, Ruth Sless, Albert Spleleers, Marcel Vastenavondt, Madeleine Waeckerling, Roland Waeckerling, Desmond Walls, Rudolf Weiss and Ernest Zimmerman.