Christmas tragedy at Prestwick (Part 1)

On Boxing Day, 1954, the Prestwick, Scotland Sunday Express Reporter carried this banner headline:

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING — The remains of the tail of BOAC Stratocruiser G-ALSA testify to the violence of its crash landing at Prestwick. ~ Prestwick Sunday Express Reporter Photo

At 3:30 a.m. on Christmas morning, 1954, a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser registered as G-ALSA¹ by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and romantically named Cathay, crashed on landing at Prestwick, Scotland. Twenty-eight of its 36 passengers and crew died — 16 men, 10 women, and two children.

Newspapers trumpeted the story in banner headlines and, for a few days, filled their columns with heart-wrenching photographs and stories.

Seven of the eleven crew members, including the pilot, Captain William L. Stewart, survived. Every passenger but one died: Harry Russell, a BOAC director, was sitting directly across from a section of the airplane’s fuselage which split open and he was thrown clear.

Among the dead were two young girls; in a tragic tableau, one of them was found with her arms around her mother’s neck.

One stewardess, Margaret Coogan, was pulled alive from the wreckage by Prestwick Airport’s Leading Fireman James Smith, but she later died.

The flight originated at Heathrow Airport in London. It was scheduled to continue on to New York City from Prestwick, with a fresh crew. Twenty-one of its 25 passengers were to deplane at Prestwick.

A Prestwick Sunday Express Reporter clipping provides additional details of the crash.

Months later, crash investigators would place blame primarily on the pilot and co-pilot. While most people had forgotten the tragedy, its few survivors and their families and friends would never forget, nor would emergency workers, journalists, and even people whose lives somehow became entwined in it years, even decades, later.

Fatal airline crashes have always grabbed headlines, but now, in the 21st Century, not often. Not once, in fact, in 2023 was one of the safest years in commercial aviation history, with not a single fatal accidents on Western-built jet airliners in scheduled passenger service. Some four billion passengers flew that year, and landed safely at their destinations.sdfsdfsad

This badly damaged envelope survived the crash of the G-ALSA. Such envelopes, called “crash covers” by philatelists, are poignant artifacts that often reveal the extreme violence of aviation disasters. In the case of this cover, damage by smoke and water reflects the fire that killed many or even most of the victims, the weather at the time of the crash (it was foggy and raining), and the efforts of firefighters to extinguish the blazing remains of the aircraft. The postmark shows that the cover was posted at Paddington in central London on December 22; the purple handstamp, dated December 25, illustrates how even airmail in those days moved relatively slowly compared to the best mail service of the 21st Century. ~ Bob Ingraham Collection

A WWII bomber begets a peacetime airliners

The Stratocruiser descended from the famous (or infamous) Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, which wreaked havoc on Japan in the last years of the Second World War, first with devastating fire-bomb attacks on its major population and industrial centres, then with the world’s forever-controversial use of the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

An American stamp pictures a Boeing B-29 bomber like the ones that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, ending the Second World War. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima has come to represent the horror of nuclear war; the other photo pictures the remains of Urakami Cathedral after the bombing of Hiroshima. ~ Stamp from Bob Ingraham’s collection; photos courtesy of Wikipedia

The B-29 was famous (or, again, infamous) from an engineering point of view because of its complexity. It was the most technologically complex aircraft ever built, incorporating pressurized crew compartments, remote-controlled gun turrets, and the most powerful piston engines then available, the Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone, an extraordinarily powerful but deeply troublesome piston engine that ran extremely hot, frequently caught fire, killed more American aircrew during development and early operations than Japanese action did. In an early test flight in Seattle, the aircraft crashed, killing the crew of 10 and 21 people on the ground.

The C-97 Stratofreighter

The military soon realized the potential of applying the B-29’s technological innovations to a new aircraft that would carry large loads of freight. Their vision resulted in the C-97 Stratofreighter, which entered regular service in 1947. The Stratofreighter married the B-29’s long cylindrical fuselage to bulbous upper fuselage, giving the new aircraft an “inverted-figure-8” shape in cross-section. The first few Stratofreighters used the same Duplex Cyclone engines that powered the B-29; predictably, they tended to catch fire just as they did on the B-29. Most subsequent versions of the C-97 used Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major Engines, which produced 60 per cent more horsepower than the B-29’s Duplex Cyclones, but they too proved to be chronically unreliable. (The KC-97 Stratofreighter was a version of the C-97 designed for use for aerial refuelling. It went into service in 1950 and did much to “fuel” the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.)

A U.S. Air Force MATS (Military Air Transport) C-97 Stratofreighter. ~ Official U.S. Air Force Photo

The B-377 Stratocruiser

Just as the B-29 bomber begat the KC-97 Stratofreighter, the KC-97 Stratofreighter begat the B-377 Stratocruiser, which went into service in 1949. The Stratocruiser, which first flew in 1947, inherited the B-29's revolutionary, pressurized-fuselage technology and some of the mechanical temperament of Stratofreighter. Its Wasp Major engines were the most powerful piston engines ever fitted to a production airliner, and they proved to be just as chronically unreliable in commercial service as they had been in military service, with propeller feathering failures causing several fatal crashes.

The Strato>freighter set the stage for the postwar Boeing-377 Stratocruiser, which first flew on July 8, 1947.

Despite its technical problems, the Stratocruiser was popular with the travelling public, at least mong those who could afford tickets. The wealthy travelling public.

[cost of tickets — The Stratocruiser offered two classes of service — First Class and Tourist (Economy) class — though it is worth noting that in the early 1950s transatlantic air travel was so expensive that even Tourist class was beyond the reach of ordinary working people. Flying the Atlantic was firmly in the domain of the wealthy, the powerful, and those travelling on business or government expense. As for specific fares, I can give you approximate figures but want to be candid that I am not certain enough of the precise 1954 BOAC Stratocruiser fares to put exact numbers on your web page without risk of error. What I can say with reasonable confidence is that a return First Class transatlantic fare in the mid-1950s was in the region of £300 to £400 — a sum that represented several months' wages for an average British worker at the time. Tourist class was somewhat less, perhaps £180 to £200 return, but still prohibitive for most people. To put it in perspective, the average weekly wage in Britain in 1954 was roughly £8 to £10, meaning a Tourist class return ticket cost the equivalent of four to five months' earnings.]

With two decks and a pressurized cabin (a relatively new feature in airliners — the first was the relatively unknown Boeing 307 Stratoliner — the Stratocruiser set a new standard for luxurious air travel with its tastefully decorated, extra-wide passenger cabin and gold-appointed dressing rooms. A circular staircase led to a lower-deck beverage lounge (let’s call it a bar), and flight attendants prepared hot meals for 50 to 100 people in a state-of-the-art galley. In its sleeper configuration, the Stratocruiser was equipped with 28 upper-and-lower bunk units.

By the end of 1949, four airlines had purchased Stratocruisers, BOAC among them. The airline offered regular transatlantic service from London to New York City. G-ALSA was one of the new BOAC Stratocruisers; the aircraft was featured in the opening scenes of Home to Danger, a 1951 British film noir crime movie directed by Terence Fisher.

A scene at the beginning of the British film Home to Danger pictures the tail fin and rudder of BOAC Stratocruiser G-ALSA; the distinctive BOAC “Speedbird” logo and the aircraft’s “G-ALSA” registration letters are circled in blue. ~ Photo courtesy of YouTube, blue oval courtesty of Bob Ingraham

This real-photo postcard shows a BOAC Stratocruiser ready for touchdown at London’s Heathrow Airport ~ Bob Ingraham Collection

The B-377 was larger and had greater range than the competing Lockheed Constellation and Douglas DC-6, but was slower at cruising altitude and more expensive to buy and operate. And it suffered chronic problems with its Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major radial engines and their four-blade propellers: three Stratocruisers crashed following loss of power, propellers, and even engines.

Production ended in 1950 after only 55 Stratocruisers had been built. (The Stratofreighter and its military derivative, the KC-97 aerial tanker, were more successful, with a total of 888 aircraft built.)

Next, in Part 2: Crash investigators blame pilot Captain William L. Stewart for the crash of BOAC Stratocruiser G-ALSA. However, aviation disasters rarely result from just one person’s actions. Malcolm Stewart, Capt. Stewart’s son, explains how the crash unnecessarily ruined his father’s career and brought grief to his family.