Air Disasters

by StanleyStewart (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1986

  $3.25

• Used

  Paperback
  1985

  $3.25

  There is a strange fascination in aviation disaster, partly because of the likelihood of an almost total lack of survivors, partly because of their aftermath. Like the players in a detective story the accident investigators and boards of enquiry try to put together, sometimes literally piece by piece, the reasons for the accident and, therefore, the ways to stop it happening again. While the stories in this book are filled with past tragedies, they are also about hopes for the future. Although they deal with the disastrous loss of machines, these accounts are also stories of people - often brave people in the face of great danger - and if lessons can be learned to prevent the recurrence of these catastrophies, those who died so tragically will not have done so in vain. Air Disasters looks at 12 of the most significant disasters covering the years from 1930 to 1985: the crash of the airship R101, which led to the demise of the dirigible as a means of air transport in the UK; the remarkable story of the detective work that followed the Comet crashes of 1953-54; the Munich air disaster of 1958 that caused the deaths of so many of Manchester United's 'Busby's Babes'; the Tident tragedy at Staines in 1972; the Paris and Chicago DC-10 crashes in 1974 and 1979; the BEA/Inex-Adria midair collision over Zagreb in 1976; the Tenerife disaster - the worlds worst ever; the Air New Zealand DC-10 that crashed into Mount Erebus; the Korean 747 shot down over Russia; and the two massive 747 disasters of 1985 - the Japan Air Lines aircraft near Tokyo and Air-India flight's disappearance off the Irish Coast.