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On This Day: First airliner crash in Britain as plane plunges into north London back garden
Incredibly, four travellers survived – with two only slightly hurt - after escaping the aircraft when it fell into the back garden of a house and burst into flames
DECEMBER 14, 1920: A biplane carrying six passengers plunged into the north London suburb of Golders Green on this day in 1920 – marking the first airliner crash in Britain.
Incredibly, four travellers survived – with two only slightly hurt - after escaping the aircraft when it fell into the back garden of a house and burst into flames.
But four people - two other passengers and both crewmembers - were burned to death just minutes after they had taken off from nearby Cricklewood Aerodrome.
Firefighters were unable to rescue them from the blazing 80ft-long Handley Page Transport plane, a converted First World War bomber that had been en route to Paris and was also carrying air mail and freight.
According to the Dundee Courier: 'Their agonised cries for help came from within the circle of flame and continued for several minutes.'
The victims – Frenchman Mr Vander, Hertfordshire resident Mr Salinger, pilot R Bager and mechanic J.H. Williams – were 'charred beyond recognition'.
It all must have come as a shock to the occupants of No 6 Basing Hill – an elderly woman called Mrs Robinson and her servant.
A silent British Pathé newsreel, which describes the crash solely as an 'Air Mail disaster', shows the wreckage in the garden, with snow on the neighbours’ roofs.
As well as the twisted metal frame – after its canvas covering perished – it filmed the damage to the newly built house in the affluent suburb with a large Jewish population.
With air travel in its infancy, the plane – a Handley Page O/400 – was initially thought to have been the first commercial airliner in the world to fatally crash.
[On This Day: Farnborough Air Show tragedy kills 29]
It later emerged that a Verona Caproni Ca.48 collapsed in mid-air – killing all 15 on board – near Venice, Italy in 1919.
But it was the earliest in Britain – and the first for Handley Page Transport, which was launched in 1919 and, following a series of later mergers, would help form British Airways in 1974.
At an inquest opened two days after the incident, one of the survivors revealed that the plane had been able to climb above 100ft.
The twin-engined O/400 then hit a tall oak tree and was catapulted to the ground, where it burst into flames.
He said he escaped after climbing through a window.
The coroner recorded a verdict that the deceased had died from their burns but said he did not have enough evidence to determine a cause.
It remained the worst British air tragedy for three years until a Daimler Airways DeHavilland DH.34 crashed at Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire, killing all five on board.
In the decades that followed, dozens of others died in similar small crashes.
But they were all eclipsed by the Staines Disaster when all 118 people died on board British European Airlines Flight 548 stalled in mid-air shortly after leaving Heathrow.
It remained the deadliest air disaster in Britain until the 1988 PanAm Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, which killed all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.
