THE
STORY OF
MAn UTDur opening image shows Manchester United lining up
before the start of the European Cup quarter-final
second-leg match versus Red Star Belgrade in the
Yugoslavian capital. A 3-3 draw ensured that they
progressed to a semi-final against AC Milan – an
opening blitz gave United a 3-0 lead after barely half
an hour’s play, and although Red Star fought back,
they couldn’t find the fourth goal that would have
forced another game (there was no ‘away goals’ rule
in those days).
Hours later, five of the United players who’d
featured in the match were dead. So were teammates
David Pegg, Billy Whelan and Geoff Bent. Jackie
Blanchflower and Johnny Berry would survive but
never played football again. Dennis Viollet, Kenny Morgans and Ray
Wood were never as good again. As Morgans was to tell The Daily
Mail on the 50th anniversary of the crash, “I stayed for two more
years but I wasn’t really interested. I missed the boys so much I just
didn’t seem to care.”
The Munich air disaster wasn’t just a footballing tragedy: it was a
human one. An avoidable crash, it was originally put down to pilot
error, but captain James Thain was later exonerated and the crash
ascribed to the amount of slushy ice on the runway, which prevented
the aeroplane generating sufficient speed for safe take-off. The plane
had stopped at the Munich-Riem Airport for refuelling on the way
back from Belgrade, where the weather conditions had been good. In
Munich they were much more hazardous and should have led to the
postponement of the flight home. Indeed, Duncan Edwards had sent
a telegram to his landlady with words to that effect.
But the English Football League had never been enthusiastic
supporters of Matt Busby’s determination to enter the European Cup,
and they weren’t prepared to make any fixture concessions to the
English champions. With that concern as the backdrop, and a desire
to prove to League Secretary Alan Hardaker that they could compete
in Europe without compromising their (rapidly improving) form at
home, the decision was taken to try to get home. It was a fateful one.
As the Airspeed Ambassador British European Airways flight 609
attempted take-off, captain Thain and co-pilot Kenneth Rayment
realised they weren’t going to get up into the air. The aircraft careered
through the airport perimeter fence and hit a house (fortunately none
of the occupants were hurt), which burst into flames. A section of the
stricken plane then struck a wooden hut housing a truck filled with
fuel, which promptly exploded.
When you see pictures of the wreckage on the runway, what
strikes you isn’t that so many people died, it’s that any survived. The
rear section of the plane had sheared off and bits of aircraft were
strewn some distance away (Morgans was not discovered until
several hours after the crash). A number of the survivors were either
too shocked to help or too badly injured to do so – Blanchflower, for
example, had one of his arms almost severed in the accident and was
also pinned in place by his dead captain, Roger Byrne. However, there
were also some stirring stories of heroism. Daily Mail photographer
Peter Howard helped Albert Scanlon and Ray Wood, who were
trapped by debris, and journalist Frank Taylor, whose left arm and
right leg were badly broken, as were his collarbone and nine of hisO
ribs. Thain, meanwhile, had armed himself with fire extinguishers and
while telling everyone who was mobile to get clear of the plane was
rushing to get the fires under control, in particular the one around the
starboard engine that was threatening to blow up.
And then there was Harry Gregg. The story of how Gregg went
back time and time again into the smouldering ruins of the plane to
find and free his teammates has passed into legend. It is
encapsulated in his rescue of Vera Lukić, the pregnant wife of the
Yugoslavian air attaché to London, and her baby. Gregg also dragged
Charlton and Viollet to safety and sat with a pinned Busby until he
could be freed. For many years afterwards Gregg suffered from
‘survivor’s guilt’ and couldn’t bear to face the widows and family of
his dead teammates. It wasn’t until the 40th anniversary of the crash,
during a memorial at Manchester Cathedral, that he met Joy Byrne,
widow of Roger, who asked him, “Harry Gregg, why have you been
torturing yourself for 40 years?”
Gregg’s feelings were understandable. At one point he, Murphy
and Bill Foulkes walked around the Rechts der Isar Hospital in
Munich while Chief Surgeon Georg Maurer gave them an assessment
of each man’s chances of survival. Johnny Berry, who had a fractured
skull and broken jaw, elbow, pelvis and leg, was deemed unlikely
to pull through, but he did after spending two months in hospital,
during which time he was not informed which of his teammates had
died as doctors felt the shock would be too much for his health.Below left
Rescue workers
at the crash site
following the
Munich air
disaster of 6
February 1958
Below right
A pregnant Vera
Lukić and baby
daughter Vesna
are visited in
hospital by her
husband after
being saved by
Harry Gregg“ GREGG DRAGGED CHARLTOn An D VIOLLET TO
SAFETY An D SAT WITH A PInnED BUSBY
U nTIL HE COULD BE FREED”
20 The Story of Man Utd FourFourTwo.com