Suez Canal Zone

UK Service Personnel in air crash

Written by Godfrey Dykes.

© RN Communications Branch Museum/Library

  UK Service Personnel enroute back home to the Uk die in air crash after a duty tour in the Suez Canal Zone.

  1956 and memories of the expression 'Suez Canal Zone' are vivid in my memories for the war against Egypt led by Colonel Nasser, which took place in the autumn of that year and so much has been written about the pro's and con's of our involvement and outcome. However, the definitive history written in a very useful history reference book by Anthony NUTTING called 'No end of a lesson The Story of Suez' (no ISBN No listed) published by Constable and Company in 1967, of 10-12 Orange Street London WC2 copyright Anthony Nutting.

  At the very beginning of that troubled year (wars in many areas involving many countries in several geographical areas) saw the end of a UK duty of protection in the Canal Zone for a group of RAF personnel who were packing their kit bags ready for the journey back home to the UK. With them would be a lone soldier who had been granted compassionate leave to visit his sick father.

  At that time the cold war engaged the operational services of the RAF of its many kinds of aircraft, and so the government had hired a civilian aircraft to do its trooping movements involving flights to and from many parts of the world for tri-service units. On the occasion of airlifting these 24 airmen and 1 soldier the War Office, in league with the Air Ministry and the Admiralty had hired a Scottish Airlines aircraft called an Avro York which looks like this and is a four engined turbo prop transport plane. Enroute, the aircraft stopped over in Malta at RAF Luqa (the islands main airport for all commercial flights) for refuelling, and during this period the aircraft had performed well throughout the period being hired. On Saturday the 18th February 1956 the aircraft left RAF Luqa fully serviceable and fuelled destined for London's Stanstead airport in Essex UK. At take off, the control tower reported smoke coming from one of the engines and alerted the pilot. Little is known thereafter but the pilot struggled to control the aircraft which sadly crashed not far from the end of the runway on terra firma and all on board (50, servicemen plus flight and cabin crew) perished. In places on-line it suggests that the crash was attributable to pilot error! The bodies of the civilian crew were flown back to the UK for private burial and those of the service personnel were buried in Malta fully honoured by the Commonwealth War Grave Commission.

  Much later on after an inordinately lengthy time which annoyed many, British and Maltese people, a memorial stone was finally erected on the site of the crash at a place called Zurrieq.

  The cause of the disaster was stated thus. Shortly after becoming airborne, the boost enrichment capsule in the carburetor of the number one engine failed, and the engine caught fire. The pilots failed to feather the propeller as the aircraft slowly climbed to 700–800 feet; they then made a left turn to return to the airport. Shortly after retracting the flaps, the aircraft went into a nose-up attitude at very low speed. This resulted in a stall, which caused the aircraft to enter an unrecoverable dive. It crashed into the ground near Zurrieq killing all 50 passengers and crew on board.

  The very mention of the Mediterranean and the Levant areas brought ill feelings from our armed forces for three reasons. In no specific order that France and the UK defeated Nasser and Egypt, but home and world pressure particularly by the USA from Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower, denied the armed forces from claiming that fact, in short those who died fighting for their country died in vain, and we who came home either as hospitalised wounded/walking wounded, or unscathed, were effectively ostracised. Then came a disgusting reluctance of our defence department to award a medal for Canal Zone service given BEFORE (and during which deaths occurred) the Suez War/Crisis. Sheer pressure by a caring public embarrassed the government into giving a Canal Zone Medal (a Medal was given for the Suez War itself as it finished) and perhaps the most galling thing of all, a Russian Convoy Medal in recognition of the suffering those men went through scores of years TOO LATE! And then this air crash incident brought much melancholy to our boys and girls in uniform.