British jet crashes after being caught in Calcutta storm
A London-bound British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) Comet crashed in flames into a paddy field about 40km northwest of Calcutta shortly after taking off from Dum Dum Saturday evening, killing 43 people on board, including two infants, ten women and a crew of six.
The aircraft, on its Singapore-London flight, made a perfect take-off for Delhi at 4.30pm. The plane, according to all available reports, was caught in a storm and exploded mid-air.
When the aircraft was reported overdue in Delhi, where it was scheduled to land at 6.50pm, the authorities alerted all airports and police stations to watch out for the missing Comet.
In the early hours of Sunday the Indian Air Force and the BOAC sent out search planes for the missing plane. A BOAC Yorker after a brief search, located the wreckage.
Although about two hours after the accident, a police station 32km from Calcutta received reports of the crash, it was not possible to rush aid due to the inaccessibility of the place where the aircraft had crashed, nor could the accident be reported to Calcutta the same night, as the storm had cut communication lines.
Indian Civil Aviation (ICA) and BOAC officials visited the site on Sunday. A senior BOAC official from London was expected to arrive in Calcutta on Monday to make an on-site investigation. Mr Malhotra, accidents inspector at ICA, was also expected to arrive on Sunday night from Delhi. The wreckage will not be cleared until the investigation is over. Recovery of bodies will resume Monday.
According to witnesses from villages nearby, who were hurrying home due to the impending storm, 'a huge boulder of fire in a terrific speed came exploding through black clouds and dived like a live meteor.' It was the wingless blazing cockpit and the main body of the Comet. The wings of the aircraft, which was trying to gain altitude presumably to fly above the high winds, first broke and scattered across villages spread over an area of eight square miles.
The engine fell in a ditch which soon turned into an inferno. A series of explosions and screams were heard, said a villager who lives near the ditch. But the explosion prevented the villagers from rushing or organizing help to the victims.
The Jangipara police station received the reports of the crash from three different villages and had accordingly recorded that three planes had crashed in that area the same evening. As the communication lines were dislocated by the storm, the report could not be sent to Calcutta until Sunday morning.
The wings and some portion of the tail were found about 6km from where the engine crashed in a dried-up ditch in a vast paddy field.
Of the 43 passengers only 21 bodies were found near the tangled mass of aluminium and steel of the fuselage. Quite a few were believed to have been completely burnt in the fuselage blaze which died on its own in the morning when all that was combustible had been consumed by the fire.
The crash was reported to the fire brigade in the morning and the service mobilised all its petroleum fire-fighting equipment from various stations and rushed them in five units. The rain muddled the kucha road access and the equipment had to be abandoned mid way. The firemen reached the scene on foot, but found they could only salvage the stack of mail bags still smouldering.
Same was the case with the hospital vans and first-aid units. Police called for large carriers of bodies instead of ambulance cars.
BOAC officials in Calcutta and the ICA officers reached the spot well after mid-day, travelling 40km by car, rail and on foot.
Police officers were the first to reach the spot and begin rescue work.
Only after the BOAC chief in Calcutta, Mr Jones, and his staff had reached the place where the plane had crashed, the company could say that all on board the Comet were lost, although all the bodies were yet to be accounted for.
Throughout the day about 200 policemen were busy collecting bodies and arranging for their transportation to Calcutta.
Eighteen bodies, all gathered from near the main wreckage, were in the first lot to reach Calcutta late in the evening.
Later reports said 21 bodies were brought to Howrah by a special train on the Howrah-Amta Light Railway shortly after 9pm.
All the bodies except three were recovered, according to the local sub-divisional officer.
It was learnt that the Dum Dum airport weather office had alerted all air stations of Bengal, Bihar, UP and Orissa that a strong north-wester with a sweeping velocity was heading towards Calcutta. The alert was signalled an hour before the doomed plane took off. It detailed the path of the wind as having reached Asansol at 2.15pm, expected at Barrackpur aerodrome (about 24km from Calcutta) at 4.30pm and at Dum Dum at 5.15pm.
The bodies, brought to Howrah, were carried from the station in police vans, to a 'cool house' where they would be kept overnight before being sent on Monday for postmortem and identification.
Cooling arrangements for the bodies were made on special instruction from the chief minister, Dr BC Roy, to prevent decomposition, police officials said.
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