50 Years Ago – Stockport Air disaster: The holiday flight that ended in catastrophe

Hi Viscount
You are correct, by the time I got there the following day it had been moved back off the road into the field. what happened was that the crew were unable to maintain the approach with 2 engines stopped, while on finals it banked to port and missed the tower on top of the terminal building and landed in the field, then sliding across the Dublin-Belfast road. A very lucky escape, I think the only injury was a fractured wrist. Attached is a photo from a newspaper of the time showing it across the road.[ATTACH=CONFIG]253891[/ATTACH]

A photo very similar to that here of G-ARJY at Dublin has appeared on nwan forum and provoked discussion a year or two back. I’ve been back, looked at the thread and find the post with a link to short movie clip of the aircraft shortly after the landing appears to have been deleted. Some confusion as to whether it was an under- or over-shoot of the Dublin runway. Look closely and there is a fence behind the aircraft and no ‘witness’ marks on the ground. If I recall correctly the film clip showed the aircraft having come to rest blocking a road – by the time the still photo was taken ‘JY had been moved, and the ‘Starways’ titles painted out.

I also recall a magazine article a good few years ago stating that the fuel system of the Canadair Argonaut was so complex as the C-54/DC-4 fuel system had been extensively adapted to cater for the different demands of the Merlin powerplant against the P&W radial. Could have been that the Merlin’s had superchargers – or maybe I’m stretching the ‘grey cell’ too far? Knowing this forum someone who really knows will be along shortly.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]253890[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]253890[/ATTACH] There was a fuel related accident with Starways DC-4 G-ARJY landing at Dublin in 1961, it was put down to crew error in managing the fuel system. If my memory serves me right the cross feed fuel levers were in the wrong position, this DC-4/C54 was new to the fleet and had a different fuel system to the rest of the fleet. Everybody survived this crash which was into an open field, unlike the tragic result in Stockport.

Only reference to the DC-4/C 54 fuel system being complex was in the Wiki link to a DC 4 crash in Oz, that was controversially put down to water in the fuel, but no detail of the system.

Thanks, must have been.

A quick Google brings up the report on the fuel system of the Argonaut, but no detail of the DC-4/C54 that I could find. Seems to be a Canadair mod?

Did the same problem affect DC-4s?

IIRC there was a complete BBC programme devoted to the cause of that incident, a long, long time ago. I remember that day because my uncle (MD of BM at the time) & aunt were visiting myself & my wife when there was a knock on the door (we had no phone then) & his friend gave him the bad news. Seems that others in the industry were aware of the crossfeed leak possibility on Argonauts, but there was no central information centre that could collect & disseminate the problem to other operators.

Thank goodness events like this are relatively rare nowadays.

Depends upon unfortunately what part of the world you are travelling in

Thank goodness events like this are relatively rare nowadays.