On the Sunday morning in question I was employed by Servisair as a Traffic Officer in my early 20s at Stansted and arrived for the start of my day shift at 0600. I was asked by my Duty Officer if I would take our day shift loading staff from what was then the terminal or northside of the airport across to the cargo stands which were located roughly where the terminal sits today southside. The weather was extremely foggy at the time and we also had two Flying Tigers ground engineers join us in the crewbus to hitch a lift to their DC8 63F which we were to handle that day for a livestock departure. And so we departed northside along with a tug which I was to escort to the FT DC8. This meant crossing the runway at its mid point obviously under the control of Stansted Tower, all went well and we all arrived safely on the cargo apron. I picked up the poor old night shift loading staff and as instructed by my D/O began the return journey to the northside again. All was routine until arriving at the mid point runway crossing and calling on R/T for clearance to cross when I was instructed by STN tower to hold position as there was one to land, considering the heavy fog we were all quite surprised and I asked tower to repeat last message and there was indeed the Intercontinental DC8 on approach. I wound down the Transit window and could just hear the distant jet sound from the RWY23 direction, viz was really bad as the jet sound got louder. We heard the tower give the DC8 its final wx details and clearance to land, suddenly the engine sound increased dramatically and at the same time there was a very loud thud from our left hand side followed shortly afterwards by the aircraft passing not overhead us but behind and seemingly to the left of the runway…the loudest jet sound that I had ever heard followed immediately by what sounded like pieces of light metal falling around us although we could not see anything around our immediate position and we did not see the offending DC8 at any time, we had no idea then that the thud we had heard was the landing DC8 striking the FT DC8 taking approx the top third of the fin off of the aircraft. The tower controller asked if we were still in position as he suspected that there had been an incident, I acknowledged that and confirmed that we were still holding at which point we were instructed to return to the cargo area and not to cross the runway. The sight which greeted us on our return to the FT DC8 was not one I shall ever forget, what we did not know at the time was how lucky an escape we had all had. There were tyre marks from the landing DC8 at the top of what was left of the fin on the FT and of course those two FT staff were on their aircraft at the time, one on the flight deck and one in the rear main deck area. The steps at the rear door of the FT aircraft were several feet away from the door sill following the impact but both FT folks were I think thankfully unhurt. I was told later by one of the airport police that they were informed that had the IC DC8 not impacted the FT machine then it would probably have continued its off course decent and landing onto what was then the Mobile Home Park at Takeley on that early Sunday morning. I seem to remember that the IC DC8 landed safely at MAN with some of the flight deck crew allegedly fleeing the a/c after shutting down on the runway. The FT DC8 was eventually repaired at STN after having parts from the fin of an African Safari DC8 fitted, which had been resident at STN for some time, owned by the Fire Service I think, and the aircraft returned Stateside some weeks later. I have never seen these pics before, thanks for posting them. It was quita a day for a “rookie” T/O.
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