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1961 Holtaheia Vickers Viking crash

Airplane crash in Norway

Field	Value
name	Holtaheia accident
date	9 August 1961
image	Eagle Airways Viking Manchester 1960.jpg
caption	A similar Vickers Viking operated by Eagle Airways in 1960
summary	Controlled flight into terrain
occurrence_type	Accident
site	Holta, Strand, Norway
aircraft_type	Vickers 610 Viking 3B
origin	London Heathrow, England
destination	Stavanger Airport, Sola
coordinates
operator	Eagle Airways
tail_number	G-AHPM
fatalities	39
passengers	36
crew	3
survivors	0

The 1961 Holtaheia Vickers Viking crash () was a controlled flight into terrain incident on 9 August 1961 at Holta in Strand, Norway. The Eagle Airways (later, British Eagle) Vickers 610 Viking 3B Lord Rodney was en route from London Heathrow to Stavanger Airport, Sola on an AIR Tours charter flight taking a school group for a camping holiday. The aircraft was making an instrument landing when it crashed 54 km north east of Stavanger. All 39 people on board died.

Crash

The Viking left London Heathrow at 13:29 on what was an estimated two and a half-hour charter flight. Between 16:24 and 16:30 it crashed 18 nmi north-east of the airport on to Holtaheia, a steep mountainside at an elevation of 1600 ft. The crash site was 30 ft below the summit.

The aircraft was destroyed and an intense fuel and oil fire followed the impact. The search for the aircraft included an RAF Shackleton and Royal Norwegian Navy ships investigating the fjords in the area. The wreckage was found fifteen hours after the crash by a Royal Norwegian Air Force helicopter, 15 mi east from the ILS track.

Fatalities

The 36 passengers were a school party of 34 boys aged 13 to 16 and two teachers from the Lanfranc Secondary Modern School for Boys (now The Archbishop Lanfranc Academy) in Croydon, South London. The three crew members on board also died. The crash was at the time the deadliest aviation incident in Norway.

Aircraft

The aircraft was a twin piston-engined Vickers 610 Viking 3B serial number 152 and registered in the United Kingdom as G-AHPM. It first flew on 2 January 1947 and was delivered new to British European Airways.

Investigation

The report into the crash put the cause down to "a deviation from the prescribed flight path for reasons unknown".

Aftermath

33 of the boys and one teacher were buried together at a communal grave at Mitcham Road Cemetery in Croydon on 17 August 1961.

Ewan MacColl, who lived in Croydon, wrote a song, "The Young Birds", about the accident.

References

Bibliography

References

World Airline Accident Summary, United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority, 1974, {{ISBN. 0-903083-44-2, page 17/61
"The Queen Sends Message To Families" ''[[The Times]]'', 11 August 1961; pg. 8
"34 Boys in Missing Airliner" ''The Times'', 10 August 1961; pg. 8
Hagir, Lise Andreassen. (9 August 2011). "Ein heil skuleklasse døde i flyulukka". [[Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation]].
"9 Aug 1961". [[Aviation Safety Network]].
Martin 1975, p. 19
''Flight International'' 4 October 1962, p. 557.
(18 August 1961). "Thousands Line Funeral Route – 34 Air Crash Victims in Common Grave".
(1962). "The New Briton Gazette Volume 2".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

aviation-accidents-and-incidents-in-1961 aviation-accidents-and-incidents-in-norway 1961-in-norway accidents-and-incidents-involving-the-vickers-vc.1-viking british-eagle-accidents-and-incidents airliner-accidents-and-incidents-involving-controlled-flight-into-terrain august-1961-in-europe 1961-disasters-in-norway

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