CF-CZB Bristol
175 Britannia 314
(c/n 13394)
This nice shot is from the Bristol Aeroplane Company,
taken at Filton prior to delivery to CPAL
in
April of 1958. The aircraft was, in fact, built by Short Bros.
under licence. Canadian Pacific
named it 'Empress of Vancouver'. On 22 July 1962 the
aircraft departed Honolulu on Flight
323 for
Sydney, via Fiji and Auckland when, two minutes after becoming
airborne, a fire warning
sounded for the No.1 engine. The No.1 prop was immediately
feathered and the pilot elected
to return to Honolulu. After dumping most of the fuel an
ILS approach was made but the aircraft
flared too high and a go around was attempted. The aircraft
was seen to veer sharply to the left
and the wing tip struck the ground. The aircraft
then struck some earth-moving equipmernt and
broke up. Twenty-seven of the 40 persons aboard were
killed. The official cause of the accident
was
stated as "The attempted three-engine go-around, when the aircraft was
in a full landing
configuration, at insufficient airspeed and altitude to maintain
control."
Some 50 years after this accident (in March 2012) I was contacted by
John E. Pudney (living
today in Northcliffe, West Australia) whose father, Arthur Pudney, was
killed in this disastrous
crash.
John
states: "I was just a boy of 9 years old at the time, living in
Los Gatos, California. . I have
vivid memories of the morning after the
flight. The police and a man from the airline
knocked
on our door at
about 7:30 am. But I
already knew my father was dead.....I had dreamed about
it
that
night. ..And when I woke up
in the morning before the knock on the door. I knew before
I
was
told,..........."
(Such premonitions are, I am told, quite common) John
sent me a complete set of newspaper
clippings of the crash and appended below is the front page of the
Sydney Daily Mirror for July
24,1962.
The other clippings reveal details as to the intensity of the resultant
magnesium fire in
this, the
first commercial fatality at Honolulu International Airport.