‘The scene that greeted everyone that day was horrendous...’

HALF a century on people remember the events of June 4, 1967, very vividly.

Even those not directly involved recall where they were when the heard about the disaster and what they were doing.

Some have got in contact with the Stockport Express and Manchester Evening News to share touching tales of what they and their family were doing on that tragic day.

Bev Owen said: “My dad was a police officer in the coroners department he dealt with the bodies and did the post mortems. I remember him leaving me at my grandparents, which is where we had gone. My grandparents couldn’t get me home as all roads were blocked so they sent a traffic policeman that I knew to take me home.

“I remember the smell of my dad coming home for weeks - it was the smell of burned flesh but it took him years before he told me the details. My mum said that day changed him so much but I am so proud of him and all the others. It was horrific and should never be forgotten.”

Helen Madden, who was nine at the time, said: “On the day my family was meant to be going to Blackpool or somewhere but my late father got a phone call to take the press newspaper photographs.

“I think he was at the Daily Mirror or Daily Sketch. We were all put in the car and the scene that greeted everyone that day was horrendous. My dad was asked to board the remains of the plane to take photographs inside. He came out sometime later ashen faced, deeply traumatised.

“I remember the emergency services, an old ambulance where a man in a white shirt and blood stained boarded. I remember corrugated metal sheets carrying bodies to the temporary mortuary.

“I had to go after my inquisitive very young brother who had gone to look. Mum realising we’d slipped away, immediately dragged us away but too late. Horrendous. To this day I never understood what possessed my mum and dad to take us. I can only say they’d no idea what the carnage would have been.”

And Karen Timperley said: “My dad was working and he saw the plane was flying dangerously low. He and his workmates jumped into a van and went straight to the crash site.

“He was there all day and only spoke of the accident on that day. He never mentioned it again, he was too traumatised. He was on many of the press photographs.”