An Aer Lingus aeroplane, the St. Kevin, crashes into Moel Siabod, a 2,860-foot mountain in Wales, during a blinding rainstorm on January 10, 1952 and burns out with the loss of all twenty passengers and a crew of three. It is Aer Lingus’s first fatal crash in fifteen years of service. Tragically the only item to survive intact is a child’s doll, belonging to a four-year-old passenger.

The plane is flying en route from London Northolt to Dublin leaving at 5:25 PM and is due to land at Collinstown at 8:10 PM. The last message received is a report to the Nevin Radio Station, south of Anglesey, which says that the plane is flying normally. The plane is piloted by Captain J. R. Keohane, from Whitehall, Dublin, with W. A. Newman, from Dundrum, Dublin, as First Officer and Deirdre Sutton as air hostess.

The crash is believed to have occurred within the next half-hour during a gale. The first news of the disaster comes from two people who telephone Caernarvon police at 7:10 PM and report that they had heard the sound of an aircraft overhead, then the sound of a crash and saw a big glow in the sky near the mountains. Police and scores of Royal Air Force (RAF) men and soldiers are involved in the tortuous rescue mission in torrential rain.

When the first rescue party has struggled 1,000 feet up the steep slope of the mountain they find the smouldering debris embedded in the earth. Most of the passengers had been buried in the bog by the impact. By midnight about 100 helpers are directed to the desolate mountain top and they work by torch light to extricate the bodies from the wreckage and the bog.

The cause of the crash is never established, although it is believed that the atrocious weather conditions may have led to mechanical failure.

On a lonely hillside in Snowdonia, Wales, a simple stone commemorates the victims of Ireland’s first air disaster.

(From: “Night 23 killed on a Welsh hillside,” Independent.ie, January 8, 2012)