100 years ago today, on Christmas Eve 1924, an Imperial Airways passenger flight crashed onto a hill near Purley killing everyone on board. It was one of Britain's earliest commercial air disasters and resulted in the very first public inquiry into a civil aviation accident. The pilot and seven passengers died when their de Havilland nosedived, hit the ground and burst into flames, a conflagration so great that the fire brigade could do nothing to stop it. And it happened here on Kingsdown Avenue in South Croydon, on a clifftop overlooking a chalkpit and the Brighton Road.
Imperial Airways was founded on 31st March 1924 as a UK operator focusing on international flights and had a London base at Waddon aerodrome, or Croydon Airport as it would soon become better known. Their first London to Paris shuttle flew on 26 April, followed by connections to Brussels, Amsterdam and a summer service to Zürich, all usefully doubling up as an airmail carrier. The plane we're interested in was a de HavillandDH.34, a single-engined biplane with plywood fuselage and seating for eight passengers, callsign G-EBBX. It had made several cross-Channel flights over the previous week, with the pilot reporting 'rough running' of the engines on the last flight into Croydon.
The doomed flight was the noon departure to Paris carrying seven unfortunate international passengers, three of them from the same family. George Sproston (76) was a retired fish salesman travelling to Paris for the holidays with his racing driver son Archie (37) and his French daughter-in-law Marie (21). Also intending to spend Christmas in Paris was Cedric Trudgett (21), a clerk with the Nitrate Manufacturing Company and an upcoming journalist. Law student Maurice Luxenburg (18) was seen off to the airport by his father, a retired diamond merchant. Dr Borbosa Lama (32) was a Brazilian national returning to Lucerne in Switzerland. Annie Bailey (64) was an army captain's wife who'd been staying in Twickenham and was starting a long journey home to Australia. Pilot David Stewart (32) was from Wallington.
What happened to G-EBBX during its brief flight was picked over in enormous detail at the subsequent inquiry. Taking off that day was challenging because the grass runway was sodden with moisture after recent rain, nor was it helped by the plane launching head-on into a strong southwesterly wind. Its initial struggles were observed by a team of five employees working for Croydon Corporation Electricity Department who were laying a cable less than a mile away in Mount Park Avenue, close to the eventual crash site. Around ten past twelve they became concerned when they saw the plane was flying unsually low and feared it might hit the roof of one of the new houses nearby. They observed the pilot swerving as if trying to rise, but without success, then slanting downwards and failing to regain control.
"There were all sorts of winds coming from different directions, and we thought the machine must have got into an air pocket for just as she seemed to be about 150 feet up she went on for a few yards and nose-dived into the grassy hill. No sooner we saw that we raced headlong to the spot with our tools and axes in our hands. Immediately the plane hit the ground the petrol tank must have burst for the whole thing was a heap of flames when we got to it. The flames had started from the tail part. We saw the pilot lying over sideways in his seat and we used our axes to try to chop him away, but the wind blew the flames so strong onto us and the heat was so intense that we could not get near. It was absolutely impossible to render any help as the plane and the people inside must have been burned to charred remains in a couple of minutes. It was extraordinary that not a single scream or shout came from any of the people in the plane, they all died without a murmur."
(eyewitness account given to the Croydon Times, 27th December 1924)
The fire brigade and a passing doctor from Sanderstead were also unable to effect rescue when they arrived. You can see an image of the wreckage here, and also how close to the clifftop it crashlanded.
The inquest opened in Croydon on 29 December. It heard evidence from mechanics and former crew that the plane's oil pressure had fluctuated during several flights prior to the crash. It confirmed that the aircraft had not (quite) been overladen at take-off. One eyewitness claimed there was nothing amiss about the engine noise, another that a rattling sound could be heard just before the aircraft fell. The coroner than adjourned the inquest so that a public inquiry could be held, this a rather longer affair held at the Royal Courts of Justice in January.
The inquiry dug deep into the plane's maintenance regime, especially ground checks undertaken at Croydon and other recently visited aerodromes. It confirmed that an hour long inspection had taken place just before takeoff. It decided that a blocked petrol pipe found at the site of the crash was most likely caused by impact rather than prior negligence. It concluded that the plane crashed due to an unknown mechanical defect and subsequent stall whilst an emergency landing was being attempted. It speculated that the pilot may have been aiming for Purley Downs golf course, realised he wasn't going to make it and crashlanded on the hilltop to avoid hitting the houses immediately below. Ultimately the judge cleared the pilot, Imperial Airways and all its staff of any blame for the accident, and the coroner duly submitted a verdict of misadventure.
And on Day Seven a particularly consequential decision was announced concerning the future of the airport.
"Evidence has been given before me that the aerodrome at Croydon, especially with a south-west wind, is far from satisfactory. Colonel Edwards, the deputy director of air transport at the Air Ministry, has given detailed evidence of the steps which the Air Ministry propose by way of improving this aerodrome. It is proposed to add substantially to its present area, the additional land having been already acquired, and in order to make the land which has been acquired to the west available as part of the aerodrome, to divert Plough Lane, for which purpose a Bill is being prepared."
The additional 150 acres were part of neighbouring Beddington Aerodrome on the other side of Plough Lane. This meant that Plough Lane would have to be diverted, indeed was subsequently severed, so that a largerairfield with two decent-sized runways could be laid out. This was a lot better than a man with a red flag halting traffic when necessary, which was the original solution. The Croydon Aerodrome Extension Act also delivered a new complex of buildings alongside Purley Way (the just-built Croydon bypass), including the first purpose-designed airport terminal and air traffic control tower, the world's first airport hotel and extensive hangars. Within a few years this former field was a world-class international airport, the Heathrow of its day, and all hastened by a tragic accident on Christmas Eve 1924.
Today the former Croydon Airport is covered by a business park, a housing estate and a large recreation ground called Roundshaw Downs. This open space is rough and scrubby, straddles two London boroughs and contains fenced off paddocks for five Suffolk bullocks. At present it's ideal for lengthy dogwalking in appropriate footwear but come summer will be alive with all the flora and fauna you expect to find on chalk grassland. The neighbouring Roundshawestate is a mid-60s swirl of concrete council houses, many of which have been rebuilt to higher standards since, where residents of Spitfire Road, Moth Close and Avro Way live on the alignment of the international runway. And the business park is a maze of units including a mighty Costco, various car showrooms and the gorgeously repurposed airport terminal, which volunteers open as a visitor attraction once a month.
As for the crash site that's now part of the Kingsdown Estate, specifically Kingsdown Avenue, a residential street that in 1924 was as yet undeveloped. At its lower end it's perfect 1930s Croydon suburbia, a mixed bag of detacheds and semis set back along a climbing road. At its top end are blocks of lowlier flats with an excellent view across the valley towards Purley Oaks. And in the middle is a small eye-shaped green with a row of big Tudorbethan houses humped across the top and a line of railings protecting a sheer drop across the bottom. Nobody wants to live where G-EBBX hit so they left this open space so nobody has to.
For many years the only memorial was a cross painted on a pillar on the original railings and hidden behind a shroud of shrubbery. But at 2006 the local residents got together with the Croydon Airport Society and added a proper plaque, unveiled with due ceremony, beneath a more permanent white cross. This now reminds passers-by that what was once Britain's worst civil air accident happened right here on Kingsdown Avenue, as travellers hoping to get away for Christmas ended their journey in the most tragic circumstances. Pause a while above the chalk cliffs, looking down across all the streets of housing Captain Stewart skilfully missed, and recall that air disasters, public inquiries and airport expansions are nothing new, just thankfully very rare indeed.
