The 50th anniversary of one of Australia’s worst aircraft crashes is being commemorated in western Queensland today.
Family and friends of the 24 on board the Vickers Viscount prop-jet plane that exploded mid-air 19 kilometres west of Winton on September 22, 1966 have gathered for the memorial service in Winton.
The service operated by Ansett/ANA was an hour out of its regular flight between Mount Isa and Longreach/Brisbane when the accident happened at around 1.05pm.
The cause was later identified as a fire in a cabin air blower, which spread to a fuel tank in the wing, where a main spar was heated and caused the port wing to fail in flight.
Longreach air traffic control had been notified by the pilot of an engine fire and requesting an emergency landing at Winton, but before emergency services had time to get to the airport, the caretaker of Nadjayamba homestead rang police to say he had heard a “tremendous explosion” nearby.
When police arrived on the scene they were confronted with flaming wreckage and bodies scattered over a wide area.
Four of the victims were from Mount Isa. They included Eileen Fisher, the 62-year-old wife of the chairman of Mount Isa Mines Ltd; Samuel McKenzie, 54, the owner of the Mount Isa steam laundry; 42-year-old Ronald Cashell, owner of the West Street drapery store; and Robert Friend, 41, a diesel engineer with Hastings Deering.
At a later board of inquiry hearing into the crash in Winton in April 1967, eye-witnesses including Kenneth Campbell-Brown gave vivid accounts of wreckage from the four-engine plane plummeting from the sky.
Mr Campbell-Brown, from Daintree, was in his car at the Winton aerodrome turnoff when he saw a “wavy smoke trail” that met the ground, resulting in an “eruption of smoke”.
James Martyr was working on a windmill at Colane station 65km west of Winton when he heard an aircraft.
“My attention was drawn to the aircraft by its engine suddenly cutting out,” he said. “I saw two balls of fire in the sky. In between these, smaller pieces were burning.
“There were also some other object which passed ahead of these two balls of fire with smoke coming from them.”
The North West Star report concluded that the crash had been a tragic chapter for a town associated with Australia’s pioneering aviation history.
It is listed as Australia’s fifth-worst civil air disaster.
According to Wikipedia, the aircraft was equipped with an early-model flight data recorder, and so the accident was the first in Australia to be aided by information from such a recorder. Housed in the forward belly locker, the recorder was damaged in the crash and subsequent fire, but it provided sufficient information to allow reconstruction of the aircraft's flight path until the moment of impact.
Relatives and friends of the crew and passengers were unable to travel to the monument at the crash site for the memorial service, due to wet road conditions, but undertook the commemoration in Winton’s main street.