File:Bristol Freighter Crash, 1957 (10842432055).jpg

On 21 November, 1957, four people were killed on board a Bristol Freighter which, due to structural failure caused by metal fatigue, disintegrated in mid-air, and crashed into Christchurch’s Russley Golf Course. The aircraft served from 1951 as part of the Straits Air Freight Express fleet, the company having won the government contract to run the inter-island rail-air freight service in 1950.

Just after 10am on 21 November, the captain Robert Hamilton and his first officer Helge Torgerson, accompanied by Tom O’Connell the company’s founder and general manager, and James McLaggan, a university student, departed from Paraparaumu for what was meant to be a routine cargo flight to Timaru. It was the second flight the aircraft had made that morning. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) report, the first flight, from Blenheim to Paraparaumu, had not gone without incident. Those on board that flight were subject to ‘a sudden and severe vibration’ felt throughout the aircraft, after the starboard propeller had been unfeathered. Nevertheless, that flight landed safely and the plane was emptied and reloaded with cargo, including two Aberdeen Angus cows in specially constructed wooden crates, for the Timaru journey.

The second flight reached the mouth of the Waimakariri River just north of Christchurch at about 11.30am, and the crew contacted Christchurch’s Harewood air traffic control tower to seek clearance to descend and proceed to Timaru. Nothing particularly untoward had been noted during the course of the flight to that point, barring some heavy turbulence and strong northwest winds, and the Harewood Tower duly granted clearance to the aircraft to continue on its course.

Minutes later, a member of the Harewood air traffic control staff heard an explosion. At his exclamation, according to a report on the crash from the Station Air Traffic Officer at Harewood to the Christchurch Regional Airways Officer, the tower controller turned around and saw a large mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke, with pieces of debris raining down from the sky. Eyewitnesses on the ground had seen the starboard outer wing of the plane fold upwards, backwards, and then separate from the plane, falling onto the farmland below. The nose doors, the floor of the freight compartment, and the rear of the fuselage, with the fin and rudder attached, were the next to fall. The remainder of the aircraft crashed, nose first, into a belt of pine trees on the southeast boundary of the Russley Golf Course, and erupted into flames.

The Christchurch Airport Fire Service’s report to the Director of Civil Aviation in Wellington notes that the response of the emergency services was swift and comprehensive. It commends, in particular, the dedication and bravery shown by volunteer fire crew members, many of whom were responding to their first incident, in what was an immensely harrowing situation.

However nothing could be done for the four men on board, three of whom had died on impact, and the other very shortly thereafter. Memorials to the four men, on and near the crash site, were erected on the 35th and 50th anniversaries of the tragedy.

These photographs are of a report on the crash from the Station Air Traffic Officer at Harewood to the Christchurch Regional Airways Officer, and a telegram received by the Civil Aviation Branch of the Air Department, notifying staff of the incident. Both come from the latter department’s file on the accident, held by Archives New Zealand’s Christchurch Regional Office.

Archives Reference: CH153, Box 58, 25/3/3

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