Heavy Death Roll In Two Separate Plane Crashes in Britain

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 15059, 20 August 1949, Page 3

Heavy Death Roll In Two Separate Plane Crashes in Britain

(Rec. 8.30 a.m.) London, August 19. Twenty-three people were killed and eight were injured when a Dakota airliner of British European Airways crashed today on a hill on the Lancashire Moors.

Flying with 29 passengers, the aircraft carried a crew of three. It was on a schedule furnished from Belfast to Manchester. British Overseas Airways said this morning that the passenger list was made up of 16 women, seven men, three children and three babies.

Reports from the scene say that 22 of the 32 occupants were killed outright, and another died in a hospital, where eight more of the injured people have been admitted. Only one occupant was unhurt—a small boy, who was thrown clear of the wreckage. There was a heavy mist at the time of the accident. Others were killed in a second air crash in the north of England when a single-engine aircraft broke up in midair today in a test flight over Yorkshire.