Lurga Point air accident

The Lurga Point air accident occurred on 15 August 1949. On that day, a Douglas C-54-A-DO (DC-4) on a Transocean Air Lines charter flight from Rome to Shannon had to ditch, and 8 occupants died.

Sequence of events

All times are given in UTC.

Takeoff took place at 16:08 with First Officer Hall as pilot flying and Captain Bessey as pilot monitoring. The planned arrival time was 00:21. The DC-4 then climbed to 8,500 ft (2,600 m) instead of the 10,500 ft (3,200 m) planned as far as Marseille, whereupon Bessey retired to the crew cabin and left the control column to Hall as the new pilot flying; flight engineer Moore became pilot monitoring. At 18:20 the pilots reported passing over Marseille, and at 20:50 over Rennes. At an unknown time navigator Baumann carried out a star-based position fix, which gave a position over the English Channel at a ground speed of 138 kn (256 km/h). At 22:27 the pilots reported passing over Land’s End. At 23:00 the aircraft descended to 3,500 ft (1,070 m) and was now flying just above a cloud layer. On the basis of a Morse code signal received, Baumann believed the DC-4 had not yet reached Shannon and corrected the arrival time to 0:10. At that time the thrust was reduced and the flight continued on a heading of 310°.

By celestial navigation, however, a position 175 nautical miles (nm) (325 km) northwest of Shannon was calculated. The pilots first turned onto the reciprocal heading (130°) at about 0:50, after briefly flying southwards. At 1:06 they notified the rescue services, but did not transmit a distress call. According to their report they were 100 nm (185 km) west of Shannon at a ground speed of 140 knots (260 km/h) on a heading of 80° (east-northeast). The remaining fuel was not sufficient, however, and at 2:40 a ditching had to be carried out off the Irish coast. The 15 minutes during which the aircraft floated on the sea surface were used for the evacuation onto the life rafts. Aircraft circling directly overhead guided the British steamer “Stalberg”, by which most of the occupants were eventually rescued. They were suffering from hypothermia and shock. 7 passengers misunderstood the instructions in the chaos of the evacuation and jumped into the water. Radio operator Herbert Ashbell was struck by the tail of the aircraft after it had broken away due to the swell.