Still haunted by air show horror
I Was at the Farnborough air show in september 1952 and, like fellow reader maurice Boyle, witnessed the disaster that claimed 31 lives (mail). It was a few days before my 15th birthday and my stepfather, who had been asked to attend by his employers Fairey aviation, took me along for a treat. World War II ace John Derry was flying a prototype of the twin-engined De Havilland 110 when a fatal flaw in its design caused the outer parts of the wings to rip off, the cockpit to tear away and both engines to shear off. We were on Observation Hill when one of the engines plummeted into the crowd. there were bodies everywhere. I will never forget the eerie silence that followed and the silvery grey dust that floated down like confetti.
How we weren’t killed or seriously injured I will never know. my stepfather suffered deep cuts to his arms and hands, but there wasn’t a mark on me. all I lost was my sun hat. my stepfather asked me to take off the two pale yellow ribbons I had attached to the bunches in my hair and tie them tightly around his arms to stem his bleeding. I was so frightened when the ribbons turned bright red.
It took hours to get home and my mother almost collapsed at the dishevelled and blood-stained sight that confronted her. With no telephone or tV, and a radio that was only turned
on in the mornings for the news and on saturdays for the football results, she had no idea of the horror we had seen. the long-term effects are that I have a fear of flying and have nightmares about a plane climbing skywards before nose-diving into the ground.
Mrs LESLEY SNAPE, Sheffield. I Was 11 in 1952 and, with my best friend John Beck, had scaled the tallest tree we could find to give us a view of the Farnborough air show at the airfield a mile away. We could make
out the DH110 climbing to 40,000 ft, plunging nose-down, with three sonic bombs, before pulling out of its dive and zooming along the runway at 700 mph just 50 ft above the tarmac. the plane turned sharply to fly back over the heads of the crowd, but suddenly the banking erupted. In unison we blurted out: ‘He’s crashed!’ We rushed home telling everyone we met about what we had seen, but no one believed us until the news broke.