There was a brief delay when it was discovered, after a headcount, that one of the passengers was missing. True to his journalistic instincts, Alf Clarke of the Manchester Evening Chronicle had got on the phone the moment he arrived in the terminal to give his paper the story of the aircraft’s problems. He arrived just as the plane was about to taxi. ‘I had to tell the office. After all, we might have had to stay in Munich all night,’ he explained. ‘Oh, blimey, don’t say that, Alf,’ came a chorus from the other newsmen.
At 2.56pm Captain Thain requested permission to move out to the runway. It was immediately given and, after further routine checks, the aircraft started rolling. At precisely 3.02pm came a vital message from the control tower: ‘Your clearance void if not airborne by zero four,’ In effect, Thain had been given just two minutes to decide whether to make another attempt at take-off. If he was not in the air within the next 120 seconds, then there was little chance that the Elizabethan would be heading for Manchester that day.
Captain Thain decided to press ahead. A hush descended on the passengers. The usual footballers’ banter had disappeared completely. ‘I tightened my safety belt and glanced at my watch,’ recalled Bobby Charlton later. ‘It was just after three. There was a nervous kind of quietness in the cabin. I turned to Dennis Viollet and said, “I’m not taking my coat off this time.” Once again we set off down the runway, the fields slipping past the window in a kaleidoscope as we gathered speed. I looked out of the window to see the wheels lift and I am sure they didn’t rise more than two inches. Then, as I moved my head, I saw the fence at the end of the runway and I knew we couldn’t clear it.’ Up in the cockpit, the two pilots knew only too well that something was disastrously amiss. Captain Thain had watched in horror as the needle on the speed indicator reached 117 knots per hour, then suddenly dropped to 105. The plane had already passed the point of no return. He looked up from the instrument panel to see the fence looming ahead. And at that terrifying moment, he heard his co-pilot Ken Rayment scream, ‘Christ, we’re not going to make it.’
Ray Wood remembers the sense of foreboding as the plane hurtled down the runway for the third time, with one engine again sounding as if it was struggling to maintain power. He turned to Roger Byrne, who was showing real fear as he gripped the armrests of his seat, and said: ‘Roger, what’s happening?’
‘We’re all going to be killed,’ replied the United captain.
‘Well, I’m ready,’ said Billy Whelan, the devout Catholic. They were the last words that Billy Whelan ever spoke.
Seconds later, the Elizabethan drove through the perimeter fence and ploughed on across a road. Its port wing crashed into a house, setting the building on fire. Miraculously, those inside, Mrs Anna Winkler and her three young children, managed to escape without being hurt. But the impact tore off the wing and part of the tail, sending the plane spinning further through the snow. Amidst a deafening sound of grinding metal, the disintegrating fuselage then hit a tree and a wooden hut, where there was a truck filled with fuel and tyres. As the twisted wreck came to a juddering halt, flames lit up the wintry Bavarian sky.
Harry Gregg, who emerged as the real hero of the Munich disaster, gave me this account of what happened to him: ‘As we crashed, I thought I was about to die. I thought I would never see my wife and little girl again. I was thumped on the head and didn’t know what was happening. Everything was breaking up around me and there was this terrible noise, the noise of ripping and tearing. I could sense smoke and flames. Then suddenly the noise stopped. It was pitch black. I thought I must be in hell because of the blackness. I lay there for a while and felt blood running down my face. Eventually I realized I could not be dead. Above me to the right, I saw a hole. So I crawled over to it and looked out. Below me I could see Bert Whalley, one of the trainers, lying on the ground. I kicked at the hole to make it bigger and then dropped down beside Bert. In the distance, I could see people rushing away from the plane. Then Captain Jim Thain appeared with a fire extinguisher and shouted at me, “Run, you stupid bastard, it’s about to explode.’”
But Gregg ignored the captain’s advice when he heard the sound of a baby crying. (This was the 22-month-old daughter of Vera Lukic, whose husband was the Yugoslavian air attaché in London. United had agreed to give mother and child a lift back to England.) He went into the wreckage, pulled the child to safety, and then crawled back to rescue the mother. Moments later, he came across his fellow keeper Ray Wood, who recalls: ‘I was trapped in the plane, under a wheel, and Harry and some others got me out. They actually broke my leg with a crowbar as they lifted the wheel off me. I was laid out in the snow. I remember two stewardesses standing in front of me, alongside Peter Howell, the Daily Mail’s photographer.
“How are you son?”
“Peter, give us a fag.” I was shivering in the snow and I badly needed a cigarette. I was about to light it when I was quickly stopped. It would, of course, have been madness.’
Bill Foulkes was another who survived: ‘I got out and ran as fast as I could. I must have been thinking that the plane would blow up any second but I can’t remember having a clear thought in my head. I must have run about 300 yards through thick snow. When I was out of breath I stopped and looked round for the first time. I could not believe my eyes. The plane was cut in half – a mass of jagged metal. Bodies were strewn from it in a neat line in slush and water, where the snow had been melted. The tail end of the plane was ablaze in a petrol dump.’
In this scene of utter desolation lay the figure of 20-year-old Bobby Charlton. As the plane had broken up, he had fallen out of the cabin, still strapped into his seat, and landed near the tailplane. When Harry Gregg found him, lying in a pool of water made by the melted snow, he thought he was dead. Alongside Bobby was the equally cold and motionless body of Dennis Viollet. But, still fearing that the plane was about to explode, he grabbed both Bobby and Dennis by the waistbands of their trousers and dragged their bodies, like ragdolls, away from the wreckage. ‘I didn’t stop to think. They seemed to be dead. Dennis had a terrible cut on his head but Bobby was not badly marked. I pulled them through the snow and left them by a pile of debris,’ he told me. Yet again, Gregg returned to the burning mess, this time finding Matt Busby, lying in agony in the snow, and Jackie Blanchflower, with blood pouring from his arm. He continues his account, ‘Blanchy’s arm was half-hanging off. I ripped off my tie and used it as a tourniquet. I had just finished tightening it, when I turned round and got the biggest shock. There were Bobby and Dennis standing up, staring into the fire. Well, that nearly killed me. I was sure they had been dead. I sank to my knees and wept, thanking God some of us had been saved.’ Moments earlier Bill Foulkes had returned to the scene, where he had seen Bobby Charlton strapped into his seat. He then went over to Busby, and sat holding his hand. ‘At that moment, I thought Harry Gregg and I must be the only ones on our feet. And then suddenly Bobby Charlton woke up, as if he had been enjoying a nap, and without a word, walked over to us. I asked him if was all right and he just kept looking.’
It is often claimed that Bobby Charlton has never talked about his experience of the crash. Now, while it is true that he is extremely reticent on the subject, he has, in fact, given several accounts, including an interview in the Daily Mail just a day after the crash. ‘There was a terrible grinding crash as the plane went through some railings. A split second later it had smashed into a house or a building. I can remember being hurled through the side of the plane. I must have been knocked out. When I came round I was in the middle of a field about 40 yards from the wreck. I was aching all over as I tried to get up,’ In an interview in 1964, he gave this graphic description of what he felt on the moment of waking: ‘I could hear nothing but the howling of the wind, and I could see nothing but a couple of bodies. Neither was moving,’ Bobby did not know that he had been dragged away from