I ask you to imagine a rain of metal, rubber tubing and gaskets, copper wires, fabric and human flesh and bone dropping almost vertically onto the chilly surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea. These were followed by a gentle mist of kerosene. The larger, heavier pieces splashed violently into the 55 degree water, and were quickly swallowed. The lighter mechanical fragments and the air bloated bodies remained afloat and began to drift northward at about ½ mile an hour. The point of origin was clearly extraterrestrial, but was masked by a uniform soft, gray ceiling of clouds.
Almost immediately opportunistic gulls began to feast upon the manna from heaven which had dropped without explanation onto their plate.
It was just after 10:54am European Central Time on Sunday, 10 January 1954. Some three minutes earlier, and about 27,000 feet above the ocean, all these debris had been joined together, and were far more than the sum of the parts. Then it had been an aircraft known as Yoke Peter, and a marvel of human technology, a jet airliner, specifically a De Havilland Comet, carrying 29 human passengers and 6 crew members higher and faster than any of the gulls now filling their bellies could conceive. The bounty was here, so they ate it. Soon it would be gone, and the ocean would sweep the record clean. Unless humans took notice.
No human actually saw the disaster. This was because it was Sunday morning, the second Sunday of the new year, in Italy, the most Catholic of nations. Most people on the archipelago surrounding the “crash” site were under the roof of a church, attending mass. The speed of sound in the thin minus 35 degree C air at 27,000 feet was slow, but the shock wave sped up as it approached sea level So humans did not hear the disaster until 17 to 20 seconds after it happened, depending on where they were.
On Elba (above), driver Leopoldo Lorenzini heard a series of “quick explosions” from above, followed by a rising roar. He leaned out of the cab of his delivery truck and saw “a red flame falling into the sea,” trailing a spiral of smoke.
Sailor Ninuccio Geri, heard “....a heavy roar, like thunder” and saw “a globe of fire rotating as it came down into the sea.” Farthest away, and last to hear, was farmer Vasco Nomellini. He was working his patch, just below the Napoleonic star fort above Portoferrairo, on Elba's north shore. Hearing an explosion he looked up and saw, “Two pieces of an aircraft, the smaller in flames, falling in almost parallel lines into the sea”. Triangulating all the witnesses, it was figured the craft had impacted about 9 miles south of Capo Vito, on Elba's south west shore, in line with the distant romantic island of Monte Cristo.
In Portoferraio, Harbormaster Lieutenant-Colonel Guiseppe Lombardi, “...a compact, robust man”, was not notified until an hour later - when he left Mass, at 11:50am. But he immediately began to organize a rescue. Every available ship was dispatched, carrying nurses and a doctor.
Then, dressed “in an overcoat several sizes too big” for him, Lombardi boarded a motor boat and took command of the little fleet. Still, it was nearly 1:00pm before the ships reached the debris field, now a mile north of the actual impact site.
The fishermen of Elbe did the best they could. Bits and pieces of Yoke Peter were pulled from the fisherman's nets, along with 15 bodies and the detritus of their humanity - “Cushions. A smart blue dress. An Oriental cigarette case. A child’s stuffed bear. A ripped postal sack.”
It was an unthinkable tragedy for an aircraft whose introduction had caused “an earthquake” in aviation. American writer, Wayne Parrish, had noted The Comet was, “...giving the U.S. a drubbing in jet transport.”
This great technical leap forward was born a decade earlier, in August of 1942, when the 65 year old Winston Churchill (above) was forced to travel 11,790 miles in an unheated, un-pressurized American built B-24 Liberator bomber, converted for the Prime Minster. It was flying from London to Moscow and back, via Gibraltar, Alexandria, Egypt and Tehran, Iran. This dangerous and exhausting trip was caused by a man almost as extraordinary as Churchill himself. Almost.
His name was John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, and he was a race car mechanic and driver,
He was the first Englishman to fly, and the first to take a pig into the air. Joining the Royal Flying Corps in 1915, Brabazon was gradually promoted from Lieutenant to a decorated Lieutenant Colonel. He resigned in 1918, when he was elected to Parliament by the Conservative Party.
Then in 1932 Brabazon became an adviser to Oswald Mosley (above, center) and his antisemitic “British Union of Fascists”, a pro Nazi group. Brabazon so strongly favored Hitler that he joined the cabinet of “Peace at any Price”, Prime Minister Neville Chamberland,
Once war came however, Brabazon eagerly joined Churchill's unity government. Then, in the summer of 1942, the guileless 48 year old Brabazon told a private dinner party that he hoped the Soviets and Nazis would kill each other off at Stalingrad. It was an opinion Churchill might have shared in private before the war. But the Soviet Union was now Britain's ally and when Brabazon's remarks were leaked, Churchill had to cut him loose.
Loathed to waste a talented man, or make him an enemy, Churchill had a title invented for Brabazon. Henceforth he would known as the 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara (above). With the title came a seat in the House of Lords, which got the troublemaker out of the Commons. But Churchill still had to endure that interminable flight to Moscow to repair damage to the relationship with Joseph Stalin.
And it was during that long and bitterly cold flight in the Commando's depressing and unheated passenger cabin (above) Churchill contemplated the reality that Britain had no long range passenger aircraft. This held depressing financial and political post war implications for the British empire. So Churchill decided to order the energetic Brabazon to plot a postwar future for British commercial aviation. Over 1943 and 1944 two Brabrazon committees proposed entire fleets of idealized aircraft, only two of which were ever built.
The first was the “Type 167” (above), built by Bristol Aircraft and intended for transatlantic passenger service. The plane which took its first flight on 4 September, 1949 was 177 feet long – 35 feet longer than a Boeing 747. It had a wing span of 230 feet – 35 feet longer than a 747. The passenger cabin was 25 feet wide – 6 feet wider than a 747. And there was an upstairs and a downstairs for the passengers – “The Brabazon” as it was called, had a full length double deck.
It featured private cabins and sleeping berths, which were needed because at 250 miles per hour it would take 12 hours to cross the Atlantic to North America. There was of course a bar and a smoking lounge, a dining area and a kitchen, and even a 32-seat cinema in the rear.
This behemoth was powered by 8 paired engines (above), each shaft driving counter-rotating 16 foot long propellers. And as this improbable monster first rose into the air, a watching pilot cried out, “ Good God, it works!”
Well, sort of. The English press called it “...the queen of the skies”, and “...the largest plane ever built”. But a pilot conceded that it flew, “...like a double-decker bus.” And it cost £12 million a piece. And it could carry only 100 passengers. It was the ultimate snob's airplane for first class passengers only.
No airlines wanted to buy it, and in October of 1953, it was sold for scrap, fetching only £10,000.
The second aircraft recommended by the Brabazon Committee was the De Havilland Comet. British Overseas Airline engineer, Gerry Bull, remembered, ‘We felt on top of the world but gradually became very conscious of the fact that we were flying a development aircraft”.
On Monday, 11 January 1954, the New York Times reported on its front page, that, “..."35 persons were almost certainly killed when a British Comet jet airliner crashed into the sea ... between the islands of Elba and Montecristo..." That Monday and Tuesday, the little fishing ships from Elba scoured the northern Tyrrhenian Sea, joined by Italian and British military aircraft. More flotsam was retrieved, but no more bodies.
And on Sunday, 17 January, the London Times noted, “The funeral service for 10 of the victims of last Sunday’s Comet disaster... has been postponed until to-morrow...The remains of the other five victims on Elba have been claimed by the relatives, and will be taken from the island for the last rites according to their respective faiths...An Italian company...has been asked to try to establish the exact location of the wreckage....salvage will certainly be attempted by British vessels...At least outwardly, this accident appears to bear little resemblance to that of the Comet (Yoke Victor)..” But that left the question of what had happened to Yoke Victor and Yoke Peter. The answer to that question would change the world.
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