1949 Manchester BEA Douglas DC-3 accident

1949 Manchester DC-3 accident

250 px The British European Airways Douglas Dakota involved in the crash, at Manchester Airport in August 1949.
Accident summary
Date	19 August 1949
Summary	Pilot error
Site	Oldham, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
Passengers	29
Crew	3
Injuries (non-fatal)	8
Fatalities	24
Survivors	8
Aircraft type	Douglas DC-3
Operator	British European Airways
Registration	G-AHCY
Flight origin	Nutts Cormer Airport, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Destination	Manchester Airport, England, United Kingdom

The 1949 Manchester DC-3 accident occurred when a twin-engined British European Airways Douglas DC-3 (registration: G-AHCY) crashed at in the Pennines near Oldham, Lancashire, after a flight from Belfast. The accident killed 24 of the passengers and crew on board.

The aircraft had first flown in 1944, and was captained by F. W. Pinkerton, a former RAF serviceman who, as a sergeant, had been posted missing during World War II. The airline was government-owned.

Accident

The aircraft took off from Belfast Nutts Corner Airport at 10:58 on a short-haul flight to Manchester Airport, with twenty-nine passengers and either three or four crew members on board. US newspaper reports, using agency reports filed soon after the incident, favour the former number of crew; Flight Magazine, reporting a little time later, favoured the latter.

An hour after take-off, at 11:59, the last radio contact with the crew occurred and about one minute later the aircraft crashed. It was flying at approximately 1,350 feet (410 m) when it hit a mist-covered hill () at Wimberry Stones, near to the Chew Valley at Saddleworth, Oldham, 15 miles (24 km) from Manchester Airport. Contact was made approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) from the summit. The aircraft broke up and caught fire. Twenty-one passengers and all the crew members died, leaving eight survivors.

The dead passengers consisted of eleven women, six men and four children, three of whom were aged under two years; the crew were all male. All but two of the dead died at the scene. The injured were treated at Oldham Infirmary. The rescue was hampered by the bad weather and remote location of the crash site. Workers from a paper mill approximately 0.75 miles (1.21 km) away formed a human chain to carry the injured from the hillside to lower ground and a doctor at the scene said

I found bodies scattered all over the place. There were a few survivors lying groaning on the hillside but some of them died before I could attend to them. I have been a doctor since 1914 and served in both wars, but this was the worst sight that I have ever seen.

The cause of the accident was an error in navigation, incorrect approach procedure and failure to check the position of the aircraft accurately before the descent from a safe height.

An hour later, a Proctor light aircraft crashed on a test flight in mist at Baildon in Yorkshire, approximately 40 miles (64 km) away. All four of its passengers died.

Further reading

• - short film clip of the scene after the crash