New questions raised over Canberra Air Disaster

New questions have been raised about Australia's most significant air disaster, including a claim that bodies of high profile victims may have been incorrectly identified.

The Canberra Air Disaster in 1940 killed 10 people, including three key members of then prime minister Robert Menzies' cabinet and the chief of the general staff.

It shocked the nation and contributed to the fall of the war-time government, it is said that Mr Menzies never really recovered.

The disaster has always generated debate about how it happened on a clear and still Canberra morning, and who was actually at the controls when the Hudson Bomber plane crashed 73 years ago this week.

Was it the listed pilot Robert 'Bob' Hitchcock or the air minister James Fairbairn?

'More uncertainty'

Andrew Tink sought to answer some of those questions in his book 'Air Disaster Canberra: the plane crash that destroyed a government', which was released in April this year.

"I didn't set out with an opinion, but during the course of writing the book it became clear to me that the air minister James Fairbairn was at the controls when the plane crashed," he said.

"I hesitate to use the word definitive.

"I say the evidence is strong and I'm confident in reaching the conclusion I have an expressing it publicly."

It was feedback from his book that led to Mr Tink's concerns about the identification of bodies.

"After I wrote my book someone approached me to say I got one of the ages of the victims wrong, I went and checked and sure enough that was the case," he said.

"I asked myself how could I have made this mistake, but the mistake was in fact made by the person identifying bodies at the morgue."

The bodies from the front of the plane were not identified or tagged at the scene.

They were examined at the Canberra morgue where one was found to be that of an older man, perhaps mistakenly thought to be Bob Hitchcock.

Mr Tink believes that was actually the body of James Fairbairn.

"The mistake was made by the group captain identifying the bodies, who assumed that Hitchcock was 10 years older than he in fact was," he said.

"The reality was that Hitchcock and Richard Wisener the co-pilot were almost exactly the same age.

"The person who was a little bit more than 10 years older, was Fairbairn."

Which body, which grave?

Mr Tink made his claims public this week at a forum at Questacon in Canberra hosted by the ACT Australian Science Communicators and the Australian and New Zealand Forensic Society.

He says the evidence is definitive that mistakes were made in the identification process, but he would not be drawn on what happened after that and whether bodies were eventually buried in the wrong graves.

"I can't say that, I'd prefer not to go there," he said.

"It's more uncertainty as to who was where [in the plane]."

Shadow of calamity

In 2007, then ABC Stateline producer and director Geoff Crane produced a detailed documentary about the disaster called 'Shadow of Calamity'.

The title is drawn from a speech former prime minister Robert Menzies made in parliament after the crash.

"It is a great calamity, the full significance of which even yet is not fully realised," Mr Menzies said.

"Every man concerned was doing an important war service. Each of my three cabinet colleagues was a man of character and intense loyalty.

"Their loss just does not bear thinking about."

During his research for the documentary, Mr Crane came across evidence of confusion in the process of identifying bodies.

"I've gone as deep as I was able to access and there was no evidence to confirm without reservation who was where in the plane when it crashed," he said.

"There are certainly some questions about the identification process, but the focus of my concern was how the bodies of Hitchcock and co-pilot Richard Wisener were identified.

"I believe there is more chance that the pilots identities were mixed up than there is of them getting Fairbairn wrong.

"The really hard part of human nature is to actually accept that there are some things that we may just never know."

Families reflect

Family members representing all 10 victims gathered at the site of the disaster near Canberra this week to mark the 73rd anniversary of the crash.

It is the first time all the families have been represented since Mr Menzies opened the original memorial at the site in 1960.

The memorial is tucked into scrubland at the end of a rough dirt road, several kilometres off the Queanbeyan road near the Canberra Airport.

It has been vandalised and damaged and the gates are usually locked.

James Fairbairn's granddaughter Mary Browne would like to see the site made more accessible and the disaster itself made more prominent in national history.

"My brother and his wife and children visited Canberra a few years ago and were shocked that the access was closed," she said.

"I think it is really vitally important that everybody can come up and see the place where so many men lost their lives on that day."

The ACT Government is looking at ways to allow better access to the site and in turn provide greater understanding of Australia's most contentious air disaster.

Friday 16 august 2013

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-16/new-questions-raised-over-canberra-air-disaster/4893354