Death of the Babes

"All flights cancelled. Flying home tomorrow. Duncan".

If only. That fallacious telegram, sent by Duncan Edwards, was delivered to his landlady in Manchester at 5pm on February 6, 1958, by which time 21 people lay dead in the wreckage of BEA flight G-ALZU, and the word "Munich" was engraved tombstone-large in the dictionary of disaster.
After a plane with an alarming technical fault had aborted two take-offs on a runway made treacherous by snow and ice, a petrified United team were subjected to that fateful third attempt. Matt Busby, the manager, carried a sense of guilt to his grave, 36 years later. That it should never have happened is a conclusion shared by at least two of the survivors, Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes.

The Busby Babes, Manchester United's 1957-58 team, may well have become their best ever. Having dismantled his 1952 championship-winning side to give youth its head, Busby was handsomely rewarded with back-to-back titles in 1956 and 1957.

By 1958 they were going for the same fabulous Treble that saw Alex Ferguson knighted 41 years on. Busby had been appalled when the Football League refused to allow Chelsea to compete in the inaugural European Cup in 1955-56, and when United won the League that season he was determined that they should take part. Significantly, however, there were dire warnings of draconian penalties in the event of United's European excursions preventing them from fulfilling domestic fixtures.

That first season, England's finest reached the semi-finals, and in 1957-58 they were back. They made short work of Shamrock Rovers and Dukla Prague, then scraped through against Red Star Belgrade to reach the semi-finals again.The leading lights of a coruscating team were Roger Byrne, the captain and left-back, the titanic Edwards, just 21, in midfield, and Tommy Taylor, a buccaneering centre-forward. All were England regulars.

Third in the League, through to the fifth round of the FA Cup and into the last four in the European Cup, the "Babes" stood on the threshold of true greatness. Busby said: "I felt I was in a position where I could have sat back for 10 years while they played. They were that good."

United had chartered their own plane for the round trip to Belgrade. The decision was taken after their experience in the previous round, when they played in Prague, were delayed during the return and got back for their League game away to Birmingham City with only hours to spare. This time they were to play Wolves, the League leaders, on the Saturday. Busby wanted to be home as quickly as possible.

It had been snowing during the match in Belgrade, but in those days teams stayed overnight after playing in Europe, and the hope was that the weather would improve come the morning. It didn't. During the flight to Munich, where the plane was to refuel, it worsened, and it was snowing heavily when United touched down. The players were meandering through the duty-free shops when, after 47 minutes, the flight was called.

The captain of the twin-prop Elizabethan was a 36-year-old Londoner, James Thain. His co-pilot, 38-year-old Kenneth Rayment, was a friend, and Thain agreed to let him fly the plane home. It was one of two breaches of regulations that were to see Thain dismissed by BEA, never to fly again. The other was his failure to check the Elizabethan's wings for ice. The captain instead took the word of groundstaff that his plane was airworthy.

With Rayment at the controls, the plane taxied to the runway to attempt its first take-off, at 2.31pm. It was aborted, after 40 seconds, with the plane half-way down the runway.

The plane was dogged by a technical fault known as "boost surging", whereby a too-rich mixture of fuel caused the engines to fluctuate when accelerating. Thain and Rayment discussed what was a familiar problem, and Rayment decided he would try again. At 2.34 permission was given by air traffic control for a second attempt, which met the same fate as the first. Thain's voice came over the intercom. In matter-of-fact tones, he said that due to a "slight engine fault" he was returning to the apron for an engine check: "It is hoped it will not be a long delay."

Everybody disembarked again, and after two screeching, nerve-jangling halts on the runway, there was real foreboding in the departure lounge. Foulkes, now 67, recalled: "When the second take-off failed, we were pretty quiet when we went back into the lounge. Some of the players felt they would not be flying home that afternoon."

Edwards was among them, and it was now that he telegrammed his landlady in Stretford accordingly. When the flight was called again, there were misgivings all round. The late Peter Howard, a Daily Mail photographer who survived the crash, wrote days later: "I don't think we had been on the ground more than five minutes. Frank Taylor, of the News Chronicle, turned to me and said, 'That was quick work'.

The players had whiled away the first leg of the journey, from Belgrade to Munich, playing cards, but they were in no mood for that now, and Foulkes slipped his pack back into his jacket pocket. "I was sitting about halfway down the aircraft, next to a window, on the right-hand side of the gangway. Our cards school was Ken Morgans, who was on my right and facing David Pegg and Albert Scanlon. Matt Busby and Bert Whalley [United's coach] were sitting together behind us, and Mark Jones, Tommy Taylor, Duncan Edwards and Eddie Colman were all at the back. David Pegg got up and moved to the back. 'I don't like it here, it's not safe', he said.

"There was another cards school across the gangway from us - Ray Wood, Jackie Blanchflower, Roger Byrne, Billy Whelan and Dennis Viollet, with one seat empty." It was one Harry Gregg, United's new goalkeeper, was planning to occupy later. Gregg had signed from Doncaster Rovers two months earlier.

The new boy, sitting alone with his thoughts, noticed how quiet the cabin had gone, and glanced across at Byrne, the captain, in search of reassurance. Instead, he was struck by how nervous Byrne looked: "He said, 'We're all going to get killed here'. Whelan, who was very religious, replied, 'Well, if it happens I'm ready to die'. Somebody laughed, but it wasn't a normal, natural laugh."Peter Howard again: "We were speeding down the runway.

As the seconds went by, I realised that we were reaching a point where we either took off or stopped again. Something was wrong. When were we going to start braking? But we were careering on, beyond the end of the runway." On the flight deck, there was panic. Thain, who died in 1975, told one of the various inquiries: "I glanced at the airspeed indicator and saw it registered 105 knots and was flickering.

When it reached 117 knots I called out "V1" (velocity one, the speed at which it is no longer safe to abandon take-off). Suddenly the needle dropped back to 112, and then 105. Ken shouted, 'Christ, we can't make it,' and I looked up from the instruments to see a lot of snow and a house and a tree, right in the path of the aircraft."

The undercarriage was lifted, but the Elizabethan went through a fence and crossed a road. The port wing hit the house, the wing and part of the tail were torn off and the house caught fire. The tree came through the port side of the cockpit. The starboard side of the fuselage hit a wooden hut and a truck filled with tyres and fuel, parked inside, exploded.

Inside the plane, there was sheer terror. Gregg said: "I thought I was going to die. I braced myself and waited for the end. In the blackness, I thought I had died, but then I felt something trickling down my forehead and in my nose. I put my hand to my face and felt the warmth of blood.

"I began to crawl towards the hole in the aircraft. The first person I saw was Bert Whalley, laying in the snow, eyes wide open. He was dead. I thought, my God, I'm the only one alive, but then the captain appeared with a little fire extinguisher and bellowed, 'Run, you bugger, she's going to blow'. At that moment I heard a child cry. I crawled back into the plane, scrambling over the bodies in the dark, before I found the baby. Suddenly, a pile of rubbish erupted and out of it the child's mother appeared. I shoved her past me and out of the plane."

"I made my way outside and Bobby Charlton and Dennis Viollet were laying there, motionless. Then I saw Matt Busby, sitting 25 yards away. I went back to the front of the plane where the cards school had been cut in two. I found Byrne and Blanchflower laying in a deep pool of water. 'Blanchy' was complaining that he couldn't move because of a broken back, not realising that Roger was laying across him, dead."

Foulkes, on recovering consciousness, "jumped out into the snow and just ran and ran. Then I turned and realised that the plane wasn't going to explode, and I went back. Harry Gregg appeared, and we did what we could to help".Busby was complaining of chest and leg injuries. "I asked Bobby Charlton to take his coat off, and I put it under Matt," Foulkes said. "He collapsed with a terrible groan. I thought that was the end of him." There were no ambulances or fire-fighters on the scene. "Eventually," Gregg recalled, "a guy turned up in a coal van, and we got Jackie in and little Johnny Berry and the boss. We got into the van, with pieces of coal rolling about, and set off for the hospital."

All the passengers, living and dead, were taken to Munich's Rechts der Isar hospital, where the first people Howard saw in the casualty department were Gregg and Foulkes: "They were sitting in armchairs, wrapped in blankets. Gregg was crying. The British consul took us from the hospital to the Stakus hotel, where I went upstairs to a bedroom Foulkes and Gregg were sharing. Foulkes tasted whisky for the first time that night. He also puffed at his first cigarette."

Britain's first news of the tragedy came via teleprinter: "Manchester United aircraft crashed on take-off . . . heavy loss of life feared." The BBC interrupted its afternoon programmes to broadcast news flashes. Busby had suffered fractured ribs and a punctured lung, as well as injuries to his legs. A hospital statement said: "We do not have much hope of saving him." The last rites were administered.

Twenty-one people had died; 18 survived, of whom four, including Busby, were close to death. Eight of the nine football writers on board had been killed, as well as two other passengers - the travel agent who had organised the trip and a fan.

The bodies were flown home and lay overnight in the gym at Old Trafford before being collected by the families. Thousands turned out to line the streets for the funerals; memorial services were held all over the country, and a two minutes' silence was impeccably observed at matches everywhere.

With Busby still so close to death that he received the last rites a second time, and Edwards fighting a losing battle, football was the last thing on Mancunian minds, but life had to go on, and 13 days after the crash United played again. Busby told his assistant Jimmy Murphy, who missed the trip because he was managing Wales in a World Cup qualifier in Cardiff, to "keep the flag flying".

For the fifth-round FA Cup tie at home to Sheffield Wednesday, Murphy signed two midfield reinforcements. Ernie Taylor arrived from Blackpool, and just 75 minutes before the kick-off Stan Crowther moved from Aston Villa. "United will go on" proclaimed the front cover of the match programme. On the teamsheet inside, there were 11 blank spaces to fill in. Wednesday were swept away on a tide of emotion, beaten 3-0. Albert Quixall, who later left Hillsborough for United, said: "United ran their hearts out. They were playing like men inspired."

Two days later, Edwards died. Busby had stabilised, and United's next home game, on March 9, had the News of the World reporting how "women wept as the tape-recorded voice of Matt Busby echoed across a packed and silent Old Trafford yesterday".

The following week, Kenneth Rayment succumbed to his injuries, taking the final death toll to 23. Still Busby fought on. "I drifted in and out of consciousness," he said. Nobody dare tell him what had happened. "How are the boys?" he asked his son, Sandy. "They are all right," came the reply - a white lie born of the best intentions.

It was left to Busby's wife, Jean, to reveal the worst, albeit tacitly. "I came to one day and Jean was there, leaning over me. I said, 'What happened?' She said nothing, so I began to go through the names. She didn't speak. She didn't even look at me. When they were gone, she just shook her head. Dead . . . dead . . . dead . . . dead." As the manager's physical injuries healed, mental ones came to the fore: "To be honest, I suppose I wasn't sane. I wanted to die. I felt that, in a way, I might have been responsible. That I shouldn't have allowed us to go the third time. What was so special about me that I'd survived? I was absolutely determined that I'd have nothing more to do with football."

Manchester, a city in mourning, was no place for a man in such a depressed state, and United sent Matt and Jean Busby to Interlaken, in Switzerland, for an extended period of convalescence: "In our last days there, Jean said to me casually one evening, 'You know, Matt, the lads would have wanted you to carry on'." The melancholic spell was broken but, Busby said: "It was dreadful, facing up to going back.

He returned by rail and sea to arrive on April 18 - 71 days after the crash. In his absence, United had reached the FA Cup final, where they played Bolton Wanderers on May 3. Murphy led the team out, but all eyes were on Busby as he made his way slowly to the bench, on crutches. The players had run on adrenalin for a month or so after the crash, but then the inevitable reaction set in, and they had won just one of their last 14 League games to finish ninth. Wembley was too much of an emotional strain. Less than three weeks before the disaster they had thrashed Bolton 7-2. Now they lost tamely, 2-0.

It was all too much for the survivors. "I'd rather have been anywhere but there," Foulkes said, "but somehow we got through it." And get through it United did. Appropriately, their shirts that day were emblazoned with a phoenix rising from the flames. They had lost 10 of their best players (Blanchflower and Berry never played again), but the following season they were runners-up in the League. New "Babes" had been born.

From The Sunday Times: 12 December 1999