Chapter 10

Then and Now

The days following the accident had been filled with activity; those injured in the accident recovered in hospital, other survivors made alternative travel arrangements, companies with cargo on board Whisky Echo started to make claims for compensation, as did individuals whose letters had been destroyed in the fire – surprisingly many appeared to contain postal orders – and BOAC cleared away the wreckage, bought a replacement 707 and got back to the business of running an airline.

Australian Diane Johnson, who was living in London and had written to her mother in Sydney, discovered that her letter had been on board Whisky Echo. Interviewed on an Australian television programme on 5 September 2005 she recalled how the remains of her letter had arrived:

…it’s rather quaint what happened when it got to Sydney. In those days it was the Postmaster General’s Department. And the wording’s quite quaint. It did arrive on 3 May, which is a month later, and it says, ‘Dear Madam, the attached article was salvaged from the aircraft which crashed at London Heathrow airport on 8 April 1968. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience which you have experienced as a result of this incident.’

BOAC engineer Doug Cotterell’s sons, David and Allen, received the letter their grandmother had written to them even later. In a note, sent on behalf of the Postmaster-General of Singapore and dated 17 May, they were told:

I forward herewith an airmail letter which has been received from the British Post Office in a batch of correspondence salvaged from the ill-fated BOAC aircraft which crashed at London Airport on 8 April, 1968.

I am sorry for the damage caused to the letter.

Having survived the ordeal on Whisky Echo, Eric Blower had returned to his home in Leeds by train. Although his company, IAL, had, at first, insisted that he had to work his three months’ probationary period before his wife and daughter would be eligible to join him in Australia, they relented because of what he had been through and, on 22 April, Eric’s wife, Rita, and their daughter, Nicola, joined him on the flight to their new home in Perth. They had been booked on the same flight – BA 712 – as Eric had two weeks before:

Same time, same place, same number! I knew it was now or never. Had I put it off any longer I would never have gone. The Company arranged an appointment to see the BOAC doctor at Heathrow prior to the flight. Thank heaven for Valium (I didn’t need an aeroplane, I had my own wings!) We did actually fly from Leeds to Heathrow that morning but don’t ask me how! Probably hadn’t properly sobered up from the night before!

We arrived in Perth all in one piece on the 24th and lived and worked there for 4+ years. It was lovely. We actually sailed back home from Fremantle to the UK in August 1972. (Seven weeks of heaven.)

I spent the rest of my working life travelling with IAL (flying not a problem). Loved every minute of it. Nightmares? Yes, for about 3 years after the accident then gladly they faded away.

Sadly Rita Blower died of cancer in 1981. After Eric retired from IAL he met Denise, who became his wife in 1998. His daughter Nicola now lives in the Middle East.

Canon and Mrs Henn, after their interview with the West Australian newspaper, were reunited with their son Basil and met their granddaughter, Susan, for the first time. The couple went on to Bunbury where the Canon eventually became Archdeacon Emeritus of the Diocese of Bunbury. He died in 1987 at the age of eighty. Mrs Henn survived him and, just after the fortieth anniversary of her ordeal on board Whisky Echo, will celebrate her 100th birthday.

Having informed friends and relatives via the television news that he was safe, Richard Hamond was given an extra two weeks to take up his new job in Australia and so went back to Norfolk the day after the accident. That evening he went to his local pub where his fishermen friends informed him that they had not been worried about him at all as they knew it would take more than an air crash to get rid of him! When the two extra weeks had passed the marine biologist once more boarded an aircraft bound for Sydney where he lived and worked for four years. He then took up a position at the university in Melbourne and stayed for another thirteen years, described by him as the best years of his life, before returning to his native Norfolk where he still lives in the house in which he grew up.

Mark Wynter married his fiancée, Janeece, as planned on Friday 19 April. Three days later he was at the Chevron Hotel in St Kilda Road, Melbourne to fulfil his cabaret engagement. The events of 8 April seem to have been pushed to the back of his mind and the review in the Melbourne newspaper The Herald the next day was full of praise for the performance. Headlined ‘It’s a cool and adult Wynter’ the article went on to say that:

In an age of built-in obsolescence, Mark Wynter is a rare showbiz character. A pop idol who has survived frenetic teenage fan-dom to become a cool, adult nightclub singer.

…In fact he approaches his songs rather like Frank Sinatra.

In a bizarre coincidence, on the same page of the newspaper was a short article about a South African Airways Boeing 707 bound for London from Johannesburg which had crashed soon after take-off with 128 passengers and crew on board. Unlike Whisky Echo, two weeks before, 122 people died in this accident. It really emphasized just how lucky Mark, and the other survivors, had been.

When the cabaret engagement finished in May, Mark and Janeece took their delayed honeymoon. They visited Ischia and Rome but before they had even left Australia on the honeymoon trip there was more aviation related drama for the young singer. The flight to Italy went via Perth and soon after the aircraft left the ground heading for Singapore they felt it make a turn and come back in towards the airport. This time there was no fire but the airline had received a bomb threat and so the aircraft returned to Perth for an emergency landing. It was later that Mark and his wife discovered that the likely reason for the threat – a hoax – was that the Governor General of New South Wales was on board.

Sadly the Wynters’ marriage did not last, but Mark married for a second time and now has two sons and a daughter and a very successful acting career. He feels that he was extremely lucky to have survived the Whisky Echo tragedy.

John Molineaux, his wife, Lilian and children Irene and John decided that they didn’t want to fly to Australia after all and so took up the Australian migration department’s offer of a sea passage and arrived in Perth by boat. John worked for EBM Insurance Brokers for over 10 years before retiring to Cairns in Queensland in 1987.¹

When Donald Hay and his wife, Patricia, decided that they would like to emigrate, the only one of their five children who didn’t want to go was fourteen year old Trevor. Now he is glad that he did as he says that he ‘fell on his feet’. His brother and sisters are scattered across the country now. Diane, who was twelve at the time of the accident, married but is now divorced and still lives in Perth. Cheryl, the younger of the twins, is also still living in Perth. Lorraine, the other twin, joined the Australian Army and served in Timor during the troubles there. She now lives in Brisbane but, sadly, has multiple sclerosis. Kevin moved to New South Wales where he has a horse breeding ranch in Goulburn.

When Trevor and his family escaped from the burning aircraft they were looked after by a BOAC ground hostess. Nearly forty years later Trevor still keeps in touch with the lady he affectionately refers to as ‘Aunty Sandi’. At the time of the accident he collected all the press cuttings he could find and kept them in a folder. One day Kevin was looking for a folder and the only one he could find was the one containing Trevor’s press cuttings. Kevin didn’t stop to check whether or not his brother would mind if he took it, he simply removed the collection – the record of what the entire family had lived through – and threw it away.

After he left school Trevor joined the Royal Australian Navy and served for twenty years before spending the next twelve years as a house husband. He then rejoined the Navy and is due to retire at the end of 2007. He has a son and a daughter.

Five years after the accident Trevor made an amazing discovery:

Richard Hamond and I almost got together a few years after the crash – although he doesn’t know it. As I mentioned, I joined the Royal Australian Navy and in 1973 went to the Naval College at Jervis Bay. I was surprised one day when one of our instructors started talking about a doctor coming to the college the previous year to lecture on oceanography, but who (apparently) showed a lot of photos about a plane crash from the inside. As I listened it became obvious that it was ‘my’ plane crash and then it was the instructor’s turn to be surprised when I told him that I was seated next to the doctor. The world is incredibly small.

Trevor is still a Southampton football supporter and, when the team was building its new stadium at St Mary’s, he bought one of the bricks which formed part of the new ground and has his name on it. Sadly he still doesn’t have the team’s autographs!

For Fred and Vera Pragnell and their children the move to Australia was a success and they remain in Perth. With the children now grown up and leading their own lives, Fred, known to his friends as Freddo, and Vera have been able to spend more time on their love of musical theatre. They both appeared in a production of Les Miserables and, at the end of 2007, in a show called Paris, about Paris and Helen of Troy with music by Sir Elton John. Fred also builds sets for the stage and paints backdrops. He has a great sense of humour and is always busy. As he says:

…in my spare time I repair computers, all for love, so you can imagine a lot of people love me…!

For the Cooper family the spectre of Whisky Echo was to haunt them for many more years. The other immigrant families had the excitement of a new country and a new life to help them forget but Brian and Shirley had to learn to live without their only daughter; Kevin and Andrew without their sister. It was perhaps easier for Andrew who was so young when Jacky died that his memory of her was hazy. For Kevin it was very difficult. He and Jacky had been so close and he missed her a lot. His parents both think that he never really got over her loss.

After they moved into the Point Walter hostel they became friendly with the English family who were living in the next door hut. Sue Palmer née Joyce remembered how she and her sister used to play with the Cooper boys:

I do remember them coming down to Golden Bay with us often. My sister and I had both learned to swim whilst still in UK and had all sorts of achievement certificates for it. I remember a time on the beach down there when we took our foam surf boards out with the two Cooper boys and all got caught in a rip. My sister and I had to pull them out as they couldn’t swim at all. We hadn’t known that at the time. That incident had a huge effect on me and I never went into the sea any deeper than my ankles until I met my husband 15 years ago. He was an avid triathlete and helped me back into the sea again so that eventually I was able to compete in all three legs of the event instead of only two!

Two years after they arrived in Australia, Brian Cooper almost decided to return to England as he was finding it difficult to settle. However, they had found themselves a home and had made friends and, as time passed, the family’s lives did return to normal and they were glad that they had stayed. After they had been in Perth for a while, Brian and Shirley decided to have another baby and a daughter they called Michelle was born. Then, in 1985, their lives were torn apart again.

Kevin met a girl and got married. About six months after the wedding things were not going well and the couple split up. When the marriage ended in divorce, Kevin became very depressed. This, after the loss of his sister, was too much for him to bear and he committed suicide. After the funeral his ashes were brought back to England where they were buried in the same grave as Jacqueline.

Despite their lives having been touched by so much grief, Brian and Shirley Cooper have survived. Things did not turn out as they had planned and they have had more than their fair share of troubles but they have come through them all. They have their friends, their family which now also includes two grandchildren – Michelle’s son and daughter – and their shared interest in the local soccer club. Most of all they have each other and, in March 2008, they will celebrate their golden wedding.

Seventeen months after the accident, on 17 September 1969, the inquest into the deaths of Jane Harrison, Jacqueline Cooper, Esther Cohen, Catherine Shearer and Mary Smith was held. The inquest verdict was ‘Accidental Death’ and it was stated that they had died of ‘Asphyxia due to Inhalation of Fire Fumes’.

For some of the crew on board Whisky Echo, life continued but was never quite the same again. Cliff Taylor had been planning to retire but the fact that his life had been spared on that April day made him change his mind. He said that he felt he had to go on after that and so put his retirement plans on hold. Although he had spoken of perhaps going to live in Australia when he did eventually retire he remained in England, in the same house in which he had lived in 1968. He died in January 2006.

First Officer Francis Kirkland and Flight Engineer Thomas Hicks carried on flying for BOAC but both are now retired.

When a firm of printers in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, learned that Acting First Officer John Hutchinson had been on board Whisky Echo and that his logbook had been damaged in the fire, they offered to repair it for him. They returned the book, beautifully restored and refused to take any payment for the work that they had done. The entry in the logbook for 8 April 1968 simply reads:

FIRE NO. 2 ENGINE EX LHR. SAFE LANDING 05R. AIRCRAFT DESTROYED.

John continued to fly on Boeing 707s until February 1971 when he transferred to the Boeing 747. In October 1975 he became a VC10 captain, flying this aircraft for the next two years, after which he spent nearly fifteen years as a Concorde pilot. In the mid 1980s he was asked to do a piece for television for a show about the Battle of Britain and did so from a Concorde flying at 6,000 feet. It was recognized that he was a natural broadcaster and he has appeared in many programmes since about the British Airways Concordes and the one belonging to Air France which crashed in July 2000 in Paris.

Neville Davis-Gordon continued to fly as a chief steward and, when he gave up flying, became a councillor in Bournemouth. In 1993, shortly after undergoing a medical in which he was declared fit, he suffered a heart attack at his home and died aged sixty-four.

Andrew McCarthy also continued his flying career. In 1970 he was posted for a time to New Zealand. Then, in 1971 back in England, he became Chief Steward. He retired in 2001 and he and his wife Christina are the proud grandparents of twin boys.

Stewardess Jennifer Suares was based in Delhi and after the accident returned home but remained with BOAC. Passenger Richard Hamond remembered seeing her in Sydney sometime later and asked her if she would like to see the photos he had taken of Whisky Echo but she preferred not to, letting the events of 8 April remain in the past.²

When she returned to her home in Coventry, Rosalind Unwin found herself being hailed a heroine. The term made her feel uncomfortable as she has always maintained that she was simply one of a team who worked together to help as many people as possible escape. Despite this she was asked to appear in a television interview which was filmed in her back garden as her mother refused to let her go to the television studio. She was also invited to a number of events including a ceremony at Combe Abbey near to Coventry. She was made a ‘Citizen of Coventry’ and, with steward Bryan Taylor, was invited to a dinner given in their honour by Luton Town Football club, Luton having once been Bryan’s home town.³

Rosalind worked as a BOAC stewardess for a total of seven years. When she left the airline her love of sport offered her another career path and she became a squash professional and then a yoga teacher. Now married to husband Nick she still teaches yoga and the couple both enjoy overseas travel.

Bryan Taylor’s career with BOAC was not to last. He was very upset about the accident and felt that he was responsible for Jane Harrison’s death because he had left her in the aircraft while he got out to straighten the emergency chute.⁴ He had some time off work after the accident but when he came back to the airport he was rostered to work a flight with Andrew McCarthy again. Andrew remembers being in the first class section of the aircraft just prior to the departure time and hearing a passenger say, ‘Are you not staying with us then?’ He turned to find Bryan behind him, holding his coat and bag. Bryan said that he was sorry but he couldn’t work the flight and got off the aircraft.

Sometime later Andrew discovered that Bryan had left the airline and had become a pub landlord. He went to visit him and, although Bryan seemed pleased to see him, he told him that he didn’t want any more contact from anyone at BOAC.⁵

For air traffic controller, John Davis, life returned to normal. Then, on 6 September 1970, he was again involved in a terrifying situation. At that time the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was at its most active, having conducted several aircraft hijacks. Palestinian Leila Khaled, who had been involved with the hijacking of a TWA aircraft to Damascus the year before (see Appendix 4) and Patrick Argüello, son of a Nicaraguan father and an American mother, boarded a New York bound 707, belonging to the Israeli national airline El Al, in Amsterdam, posing as a Honduran married couple. As the aircraft approached the United Kingdom the couple, armed with guns and grenades, demanded to be allowed into the cockpit but a fight ensued with the aircraft’s security staff, during which one of the stewards and Leila Khaled were injured, and Patrick Argüello was killed. One of the hijackers had thrown a grenade into the cockpit with the pin removed but it proved to be faulty and didn’t explode. The Israeli pilot made a call to London and was given clearance by John Davis to land on runway 28R which was closed for some hours while the British security forces dealt with the situation and eventually arrested Leila Khaled, taking her to Hillingdon hospital to have her wounds treated.

Happily this hijack was the last unpleasant incident that John Davis had to deal with and he ended his air traffic control career when he retired in 1997, having transferred to Gatwick airport from Heathrow.

Jane Harrison’s father Alan moved back to Yorkshire after his daughter’s death. In 1987 he decided to sell Jane’s George Cross. Some newspaper reports said he was selling it as he needed the money for his own living expenses. This was simply not true and other reports gave the true reason. In an article in The Observer dated 4 October 1987 (coincidentally Alan Harrison’s birthday) writer Peter Watson said:

After much soul-searching, Mr Harrison has decided there is no point in keeping a medal which will eventually be inherited by someone who never knew his daughter. Instead he will sell it and give the money to the children of his other daughter.

They never knew Jane either, and Mr Harrison’s unsentimental reaction is likely to shock some people. But he says: ‘The honour is in the award, not the medal itself.’

The medal was included in a sale of other medals at Sotheby’s on 29 October 1987, eighteen years to the day after it had been presented to Alan Harrison at Buckingham Palace. It was listed in the catalogue as:

THE EXCESSIVELY RARE POSTHUMOUS GEORGE CROSS, awarded to Miss Barbara Jane Harrison, 8 August 1969 [Stewardess, B.O.A.C.], on Ladies’ riband bow and in case of issue, extremely fine [One of only four direct awards of the G.C. to women – this one being unique for the post war period]

The citation which had appeared in The London Gazette on 8 August 1969 was also presented, along with a brief description of the accident taken from the official report, a copy of which was sold with the medal.

There had been fears that the medal would go to a foreign bidder and that the unique award would leave the country but this did not happen. As David Erskine-Hill of Sotheby’s said:

Its associations are so British that it would be nice to think it will appeal strongly to a British collector – or even to the newly-privatised British Airways.

When the hammer fell at the end of the auction and the medal was sold for £9,000, its buyer was, indeed, British Airways. The medal is now kept safely in a vault but a replica is displayed in the British Airways museum beside a photo of the girl who brought such honour to the airline.

Alan Harrison lived for twenty-eight more years after his daughter’s untimely death and died in 1996, aged eighty-five. It seems that he was right to sell the medal as it is now at Heathrow airport, the place where Jane died, and remains a permanent reminder of her sacrifice. Her niece and nephew, Helen and Adrian, have also benefited, each having had money to help with their education. They made good use of it and both went on to gain university degrees. Although they never knew their brave aunt, they are both extremely proud of her.

Sue Buck, Jane’s sister, and her husband Vic, now grandparents to Helen’s children, have remained in Yorkshire where they have a lovely home with a beautiful garden in which Sue likes to work. A tall, elegant, quietly spoken lady, Sue speaks of her sister with humour, affection and pride but also with regret for what might have been. It has been hard for her to relive the events of forty years ago but she has done so, with grace and patience, for her sister.

Jane’s friends have never forgotten the feisty, fun-loving girl they met at school either and, despite the passing of the years, she remains close to their hearts.

The three remaining members of the little gang of four from Scarborough Girls High school no longer live close to each other. Kay is the only one to still live in the area in which she grew up. Margaret, who moved to Rome to work with the United Nations, still lives there with her husband and family. Sheila and her husband John moved to Australia in 1978. Their children have grown up and Sheila is now a grandmother. In a letter to the author in which she included a photo of herself and her family, Sheila wrote:

Me, now 63 (old aged pensioner!). How we have all changed!! How would Jane have aged??

It is sad to think of everything that Jane lost by her heroic act forty years ago – the chance of a life with a husband, children of her own, family and friends, her career – the things that her friends have had while she remains in their minds, and in the minds of all who knew her, a twenty-two year old girl who had everything to live for but who gave it all up for the sake of others.