Speaker 1: Picture of the scene. It is February sixth, nineteen fifty eight. Right,
Speaker 1: we are at Munich Airport in West Germany. The temperature
Speaker 1: is hovering right around freezing and there's this heavy wet
Speaker 1: snow falling over the.
Speaker 2: Tarmac, which is a really miserable night exactly.
Speaker 1: And sitting out there in the freezing slush is a
Speaker 1: luxurious twin engine aircraft. It's an airspeed ambassador known as
Speaker 1: the Elizabethan.
Speaker 2: Beautiful plane, it really is.
Speaker 1: And aboard this plane are thirty eight people. You have
Speaker 1: eleven top tier journalists, and you have some of the
Speaker 1: most famous athletes on the entire planet.
Speaker 2: The Manchester United football team.
Speaker 1: Yes, affectionately known to millions as the Busby Babes.
Speaker 2: And I mean these young men are at the absolute
Speaker 2: peak of their careers. They're returning to the UK triumphant
Speaker 2: after a massive European Cup match in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: Right, they had just played Red Star Belgrade.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and they just needed to make a quick refueling
Speaker 2: stop in Munich, you know, because the Elizabethan didn't have
Speaker 2: the range to make it all the way back Manchester
Speaker 2: on a single tank.
Speaker 1: But up until a few minutes ago, the cabin was loud.
Speaker 1: The players were laughing, they were playing cards, tossing jokes
Speaker 1: over the.
Speaker 2: Seats, riding that postgame high.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But now that mood has completely shifted. There
Speaker 1: is just this tense, heavy silence hanging in the air.
Speaker 2: Because the plane has already aborted to takeoff attempts right.
Speaker 1: And one of the players, Johnny Barry, actually mutters under
Speaker 1: his breath that they are all going to get killed.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is chilling.
Speaker 1: It really is. And up in the cockpit you have
Speaker 1: two incredibly experienced World War II veterans, but they are
Speaker 1: staring at the clock. They have exactly two minutes left
Speaker 1: on their takeoff clearance before the window just closes.
Speaker 2: The pressure in that cockpit must be immense. I mean,
Speaker 2: if they don't go right, then the flight is canceled. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're stuck, right, The most famous team in the world
Speaker 2: is stranded in Munich. All the schedules are ruined, and
Speaker 2: the airline faces just a massive logistical nightmare.
Speaker 1: So they decide to push the throttles to full power
Speaker 1: for a third attempt, and that.
Speaker 2: Third attempt changes aviation history forever.
Speaker 1: It does. Yeah, and to understand what happens in the
Speaker 1: next few terrifying seconds and the grueling, like decoed long
Speaker 1: geopolitical battle that followed. We have pulled together a massive
Speaker 1: stack of declassified crash investigation reports, atmospheric data, and historical testimonies.
Speaker 2: It is a lot of material to go through, it is.
Speaker 1: But our mission in this deep dive is to investigate
Speaker 1: the harrowing true story of a crash that wiped out
Speaker 1: a legendary team and to uncover how the actual cause
Speaker 1: was buried for over a decade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to really grasp the controversy that would consume
Speaker 2: the next eleven years of international aviation. We first have
Speaker 2: to understand the mechanics of what went wrong during those
Speaker 2: crucial final seconds on that freezing runway.
Speaker 1: So the dynamic in that cockpit is a critical piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. Right, you have Captain James Sayin. He's
Speaker 1: thirty six years old, holds an impeccable service record O
Speaker 1: a professional exactly, and beside him is co pilot Kenneth Raymond,
Speaker 1: thirty eight and a decorated World War Two ace. They
Speaker 1: are great friends, but they've made a decision that goes
Speaker 1: against company a protocol.
Speaker 2: Oh right, they swap seats.
Speaker 1: Yes, Raymond is sitting in the left seat actively flying
Speaker 1: the plane because he is highly accustomed to handling this
Speaker 1: specific aircraft from that side.
Speaker 2: And I mean that detail might seem incredibly minor to
Speaker 2: a passenger, but in the rigid world of aviation protocol,
Speaker 2: that is going to become a major point of contention
Speaker 2: later on.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: But let's look at the mechanical issue forcing those first
Speaker 2: two aborted takeoffs. The engines on this Elizabethan aircraft are
Speaker 2: suffering from a phenomenon called boost surging.
Speaker 1: I always hear that term in aviation reports, But what
Speaker 1: is physically happening inside the engine during a boost surge?
Speaker 2: So it really comes down to the air density. At
Speaker 2: higher altitudes, like in Munich, the air.
Speaker 1: Is thinner, right, less oxygen Exactly.
Speaker 2: When a pilot pushes the throttle forward too quickly in
Speaker 2: those conditions, the fuel to air mixture gets completely thrown
Speaker 2: out of.
Speaker 1: It floods the engine.
Speaker 2: Basically, Yeah, the engine essentially chokes on its own fuel
Speaker 2: because it can't draw in enough oxygen fast enough to
Speaker 2: burn it all. The thrust opens up too fast, the
Speaker 2: engine stutters and surges, and you just lose consistent power.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they try to take off, the engine surges,
Speaker 1: they lock on the brakes and they abandon the attempt.
Speaker 1: And they do this twice. They even take the passengers
Speaker 1: off the plane at one point.
Speaker 2: And this is where the local station engineer gets involved.
Speaker 2: He climbs up to the cockpit and advises the pilots
Speaker 2: on a known workaround for this exact issue.
Speaker 1: What does he tell them to do?
Speaker 2: He tells them that next time it surges, just reduce
Speaker 2: the power slightly and then advance the throttle forward very
Speaker 2: very slowly to let the fuel to air mixture stabilize.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a gradual acceleration.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the pilots accept this advice. The passengers are
Speaker 2: loaded back into that tense, silent cabin. The clearance is expiring.
Speaker 2: They line up on the center line for the third time.
Speaker 1: And the runway in Munich is over nineteen hundred meters long,
Speaker 1: any of room.
Speaker 2: Even with this plan to accelerate gradually, they should easily
Speaker 2: hit their required speeds and lift off just past the
Speaker 2: twelve hundred meter mark.
Speaker 1: So they have a huge margin of safety. They should,
Speaker 1: so Raiment pushes the thralas full power. The plane starts
Speaker 1: barreling down the runway and almost immediately the port engine,
Speaker 1: the engine on the left side of the aircraft, surges
Speaker 1: again just like before yep, but just like the engineer advise.
Speaker 1: They pull the throttle back slightly way a beat and
Speaker 1: push it forward again, very smoothly.
Speaker 2: And it works. The engines stabilized, so they do.
Speaker 1: They're peaking up speed ninety knots one hundred knots. They
Speaker 1: hit one hundred and seventeen knots.
Speaker 2: Which is crucial because they've passed V one right.
Speaker 1: V one is the point of no return. You are
Speaker 1: going too fast to safely abort the takeoff. You have
Speaker 1: to fly.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and they are approaching V two, which is one
Speaker 2: hundred and nineteen knots. That is the exact aerodynamic speed
Speaker 2: they need to lift the nose and get airborne.
Speaker 1: But suddenly they don't hit one hundred and nineteen.
Speaker 2: No, the plane doesn't just stop accelerating. It actively loses speed,
Speaker 2: which is terrifying. It really is. It drops back down
Speaker 2: to one hundred and five knots.
Speaker 1: At that point, they are traveling way too fast to stop,
Speaker 1: but too slow to fly, and they are completely out
Speaker 1: of runway.
Speaker 2: Just the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: Copilot Raiment yells that they aren't going to make it.
Speaker 1: The plane violently plows through the perimeter fence at the
Speaker 1: end of the Tormac. Oh man, It strikes a house,
Speaker 1: it tears through a fuel shed three hundred meters past
Speaker 1: the end.
Speaker 2: Of the runway, just total devastation.
Speaker 1: Survivors later describe the sheer terror of it, flashes of darkness,
Speaker 1: sudden daylight as the fuselage literally tore open, sparks flying everywhere,
Speaker 1: massive thumbs, and then just total complete blackness.
Speaker 2: And the scene out there in the freezing snow is
Speaker 2: absolute chaos. But amid the burning wreckage, there are these
Speaker 2: incredible moments of heroism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Harry greg right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It seems goalkeeper. Yeah. He manages to crawl out of
Speaker 2: the debris, but he hears a child crying inside.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: He runs back into the burning fuselage while people are
Speaker 2: actively screaming at him that the fuel tanks are going
Speaker 2: to explode, and he pulls out a baby.
Speaker 1: That is just incredible bravery, and.
Speaker 2: He goes back again. He pulls out the team manager,
Speaker 2: Matt Busby and several other people.
Speaker 1: But despite his heroics, the toll is devastating twenty three
Speaker 1: people die. Seven players are killed instantly in the impact,
Speaker 1: just heartbreaking the team's young superstar Duncan Edwards. He actually
Speaker 1: survives the crash, but succumbs to his injuries days later.
Speaker 2: And copilot Raiment.
Speaker 1: Raiment is trapped in the crushed cockpit. Two local German
Speaker 1: rescuers manage to cut him free, but he later dies
Speaker 1: in the hospital from severe brain injuries.
Speaker 2: It is a tragedy that just wipes out a generational
Speaker 2: sports team in an instant It really does.
Speaker 1: But as investigators we have to look at the telemetry here.
Speaker 1: How does a massive aircraft going one hundred and seventeen
Speaker 1: knots flown by two veteran pilots just suddenly lose speed?
Speaker 2: Right, It's like hitting a wall and finding the answer
Speaker 2: to that sudden deceleration falls to one man who arrives
Speaker 2: on the smoldering scene just six hours.
Speaker 1: Later at ten zero pm. West German chief investigator Hans
Speaker 1: Reichel steps onto the tarmac.
Speaker 2: And he's fifty seven years old, a former LIFTWAFF pilot.
Speaker 1: Right, and the stakes here are astronomically high. It is
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight. We are barely a decade out from
Speaker 1: World War two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tensions are still very real.
Speaker 1: You have British pilots and a British aircraft being investigated
Speaker 1: on German soil, and Munich itself was the historical cradle
Speaker 1: of the Nazi Party, so.
Speaker 2: Everyone involved is treading incredibly carefully. Nobody wants an international
Speaker 2: diplomatic incident exactly, and that political pressure is the lens
Speaker 2: through which this entire investigation is conducted. Reichel arrives at
Speaker 2: the scene severely under equipped. What do you mean, I
Speaker 2: mean he doesn't even have proper floodlights. He literally has
Speaker 2: to borrow lighting from a local television news crew just
Speaker 2: to see the wreckage in the dark.
Speaker 1: You're kidding, a major crash investigation using TV lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he walks up to the wing of the
Speaker 2: Elizabethan and he finds an eight centimeter layer of snow.
Speaker 2: He brushes the snow away with his gloved hand, and
Speaker 2: underneath he finds a hard, solid layer of ice frozen
Speaker 2: firmly to the metal.
Speaker 1: But there is a very specific anomaly here, isn't there?
Speaker 2: Yes, there is. The Only parts of the wing that
Speaker 2: are free from ice are the areas directly behind.
Speaker 1: The engines, which is a huge clue, But Rechel looks
Speaker 1: at that pattern and forms his conclusion right.
Speaker 2: There in the dark, right on the spot.
Speaker 1: He deduces that the entire wing must have been coated
Speaker 1: in ice before the crash. He theorizes that during the
Speaker 1: takeoff run, the spinning propellers simply blew the ice away
Speaker 1: from the sections directly behind the engines, leaving the rest
Speaker 1: of the wings frozen solid.
Speaker 2: Which leads directly to the official German report released in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: YEP. Reichel concludes that Captain Thane failed to de ice
Speaker 1: his aircraft before takeoff. He lays the blame entirely on.
Speaker 2: Thane, and to compound it, the report states that because
Speaker 2: the pilots switched seats against protocol, it caused fatal confusion
Speaker 2: in the cockpit during the emergency.
Speaker 1: Okay, let' unpack this for a second. Reichel was a
Speaker 1: veteran Luftwaffe pilot. He wasn't some rookie.
Speaker 2: No, he knew aircraft.
Speaker 1: So how could an experienced aviator look at a crash
Speaker 1: site hours after the fact, in freezing conditions and genuinely
Speaker 1: mistake post crash ice for pre takeoff ice.
Speaker 2: Well, it really comes down to intense confirmation bias, compounded
Speaker 2: by that political pressure we talked about. Reichel needed an
Speaker 2: explanation that absolved the German infrastructure of any blame.
Speaker 1: Ah, I see right.
Speaker 2: If the crash was caused by the weather and pilot error,
Speaker 2: the Munich airport is entirely cleared of liability.
Speaker 1: It's much cleaner for an investigator to point the finger
Speaker 1: at a surviving pilot a conviction of convenience, than to
Speaker 1: find fault with your own facilities.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate conviction of convenience. You blame the
Speaker 2: guy who lived, and you close the book.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Captain Thane survives the crash, but his life is destroyed.
Speaker 1: His airline fires him, he is stripped of his reputation,
Speaker 1: branded a villain by the international press, and burdened with
Speaker 1: the guilt of twenty three.
Speaker 2: Deaths just a nightmare.
Speaker 1: He retreats to the English countryside to work as a
Speaker 1: poultry farmer.
Speaker 2: But then refuses to let that official report be the
Speaker 2: final word. I mean, he was in that cockpit. He
Speaker 2: knows exactly what he did on that descent into Munich.
Speaker 1: So from his farm with almost no resources and his
Speaker 1: health rapidly deteriorating from the stress. He begins building a defense.
Speaker 2: Which is wild. How does a disgraced pilot on a
Speaker 2: farm even begin to fight a foreign government's official aviation report.
Speaker 1: Well, he starts with the meteorological data from his own
Speaker 1: flight logs. Fain points out that he didn't de ice
Speaker 1: the wings on the ground in Munich because they simply
Speaker 1: didn't need it.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't they need it in freezing snow.
Speaker 1: Because when the plane descended into Munich from twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand feet the ambient air temperature outside the cockpit was
Speaker 1: a freezing minus twenty five degrees celsius. Fain had turned
Speaker 1: on the internal wing de icing heaters during that descent.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the wings were warm, yes.
Speaker 1: By the time they landed in Munich, where the air
Speaker 1: was right around zero degrees. Thain tests that he physically
Speaker 1: watched water dripping from the wings. The snow hitting the
Speaker 1: aircraft was melting, not freezing.
Speaker 2: But the German investigators countered that right. They claimed the
Speaker 2: wings were super cooled from the high altitude, meaning any
Speaker 2: whx snow falling during the stopover would have frozen instantly
Speaker 2: on contact.
Speaker 1: Right, It becomes a battle of his eyewitness account against
Speaker 1: their theoretical physics.
Speaker 2: So Than starts digging into the transcripts of the German
Speaker 2: inquiry and he uncovers these glaring omissions. He finds testimony
Speaker 2: from a first responder named Karl Heinz sefer Cephyr was
Speaker 2: one of the local men who physically climbed onto the
Speaker 2: wing right after the crash to help pull copilot Raiment
Speaker 2: out of the wreckage. Okay, Seffyr stated explicitly in his
Speaker 2: initial interview that he slipped on slush, but he found
Speaker 2: absolutely no ice on that wing. Wow. Yeah, Yet when
Speaker 2: the official report was finalized, that specific sentence from his
Speaker 2: testimony was mysteriously scrubbed.
Speaker 1: That is deeply suspicious, and it gets even more blatant
Speaker 1: than discovers that there were fully qualified air traffic controllers
Speaker 1: watching the entire takeoff from the.
Speaker 2: Tower and what did they see.
Speaker 1: They reported seeing the elizabeths and lift its nose halfway
Speaker 1: down the runway, which is standard procedure, but then the
Speaker 1: nose dropped back down heavily.
Speaker 2: And that detail is crucial because it proves the plane
Speaker 2: had the aerodynamics to lift exactly if the wings had
Speaker 2: been covered in a thick sheet of ice, destroying the
Speaker 2: lift capability. As Reichel claimed, the plane never would have
Speaker 2: pitched up in the first place.
Speaker 1: But the German inquiry never called those qualified controllers to testify.
Speaker 1: They only called the junior trainees who happened to be
Speaker 1: in the room.
Speaker 2: Wow. So if we rule out ice, we are back
Speaker 2: to our primary mystery. What caused a massive aircraft to
Speaker 2: suddenly drop from one hundred and seventeen knots to one
Speaker 2: hundred and five knots?
Speaker 1: What was that invisible wall they hit?
Speaker 2: It wasn't an invisible wall in the air. It was
Speaker 2: a physical barrier on the ground bush push. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: deep heavy slush pooling on the far end of the runway.
Speaker 1: Think about the physics of that. If you've ever been
Speaker 1: driving your car down a wet highway in the winter
Speaker 1: and you switch lanes and suddenly hit a deep patch
Speaker 1: of unplowed slush, you know exactly what this feels like.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it yanks the steering wheel right.
Speaker 1: You don't just glide over it. Your tires don't hydroplane.
Speaker 1: They stink in The slush acts like wet cement, clinging
Speaker 1: to the wheels, and you feel an immediate, violent drag
Speaker 1: pulling the entire vehicle backward.
Speaker 2: And the exact same physical drag happens to aircraft landing gear,
Speaker 2: just on a vastly larger scale.
Speaker 1: And suddenly the puzzle pieces fit together.
Speaker 2: Remember the first two aborted takeoffs and the station engineer's advice.
Speaker 2: He told the pilots to advance the throttles incredibly slowly
Speaker 2: to prevent the engines from surging. Because thine and raiment
Speaker 2: accelerated so gradually. On that third attempt, the plane used
Speaker 2: up significantly more of the runway than a normal departure.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see where this is going.
Speaker 2: It rolled far past the section of tarmac that other
Speaker 2: departing planes had been clearing all day. It rolled right
Speaker 2: into the unused, deep, slush filled end of the runway.
Speaker 1: This is where the bureaucratic negligence becomes truly staggering. While
Speaker 1: digging through records, Thing discovers that nine years prior to
Speaker 1: the Munich crash, Canadian aviation authorities had conducted extensive testing
Speaker 1: on runway contamination.
Speaker 2: And what do they find.
Speaker 1: They found that as little as five centimeters of slush
Speaker 1: could completely destroy an aircraft's ability to reach takeoff speed.
Speaker 1: The drag is simply two immense. For the engines to overcome.
Speaker 2: Five centimeters is practically.
Speaker 1: Nothing, barely two inches. And the Canadians sent a formal
Speaker 1: letter of warning to all major airlines detailing this exact danger.
Speaker 2: And let me guess Thain's airline had received that Canadian letter.
Speaker 1: They received it, they read it, They took absolutely no
Speaker 1: action to update their pilot manuals or training. They just
Speaker 1: filed it away in a cabinet.
Speaker 2: That is infuriating. So thing takes all of this incredible
Speaker 2: new evidence, the suppressed eyewitnesses, the aero dynamic proof from
Speaker 2: the tower, the physics of the slush drag, and the
Speaker 2: Canadian warnings, and he submits a massive dossier to the
Speaker 2: German authorities.
Speaker 1: Affecting them to finally clear his name.
Speaker 2: Naturally, But the German authorities review the dossier and flat
Speaker 2: out refuse to reopen the case. You're joking, No, they
Speaker 2: double down on investigatior Rikle's original findings. They essentially state
Speaker 2: that the ice theory stands, the slush is irrelevant, and
Speaker 2: the case remains closed. The entire bureaucratic system locks arms
Speaker 2: to fight against the scientific reality, so.
Speaker 1: Fain is completely stonewalled. He is exhausted, His reputation is
Speaker 1: in ruins, and he has exhausted every legal avenue. How
Speaker 1: does a loan farmer break through a sovereign nation's refusal
Speaker 1: to look at the facts.
Speaker 2: The breakthrough comes from the most unlikely place imaginable, inside Thane's.
Speaker 1: Own home, from his wife.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, Ruby, Thane begins looking at the evidence. And
Speaker 2: Ruby is not just a supportive spouse watching her husband suffer.
Speaker 2: She is a highly trained scientist, holding a first class
Speaker 2: honors degree in chemistry, physics, and mathematics.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: She starts looking at the chemical reality of the crash
Speaker 2: site itself.
Speaker 1: And she's zero's inn on a detail that every single
Speaker 1: aviation expert, including Reichel, completely ignored. What was it When
Speaker 1: the plane crashed into the fuel shed? It burst into flames.
Speaker 1: The Munich Airport fire department rushed out and sprayed massive
Speaker 1: amounts of fire extinguishing chemicals all over the burning wreckage.
Speaker 2: Right, and Ruby knows the exact chemical composition of the
Speaker 2: extinguishing agent they used. It was sodium bicarbonate.
Speaker 1: Which is essentially industrial grade baking powder.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and she understands a fundamental principle of chemistry known
Speaker 2: as freezing point depression.
Speaker 1: How does that work?
Speaker 2: It is the exact same scientific mechanism at work when
Speaker 2: city trucks salt the roads before winter storm. When you
Speaker 2: introduce a solute like salt or sodium bicarbonate to water,
Speaker 2: it interferes with water molecule's ability to bind together into
Speaker 2: solid ice crystals, so.
Speaker 1: It lowers the freezing temperature.
Speaker 2: Right, the mixture will still freeze, but it requires a
Speaker 2: significantly lower temperature to do so.
Speaker 1: So Ruby designs an experiment. She gets the sample of
Speaker 1: the exact sodium bicarbonate used by the Munich firemen. She
Speaker 1: goes out to her car on a freezing winter night,
Speaker 1: sprinkles the chemical on the cold metal roof, mixes it
Speaker 1: with snow and water, and carefully monitors the temperature. Brilliant
Speaker 1: she scientifically proves that this specific chemical mixture freezes at
Speaker 1: a temperature lower than what was recorded in Munich on
Speaker 1: the night of the crash.
Speaker 2: It is an absolute master class and deductive reasoning. I mean,
Speaker 2: think about where the firemen aimed their hoses that night.
Speaker 2: They am them directly at the burning engines to stop
Speaker 2: the fire from reaching the main fuel tanks. Oh therefore,
Speaker 2: The areas of the wing directly behind the engines didn't
Speaker 2: freeze because they were heavily coated in the sodium bicarbonate mixture,
Speaker 2: which depressed the freezing point.
Speaker 1: But the rest of the wings, the outer edges that
Speaker 1: weren't heavily sprayed by the firemen, were just covered in
Speaker 1: normal wet snow, and as the night got colder and colder,
Speaker 1: dropping below freezing, that wet snow turned into solid ice.
Speaker 1: Exactly so, the eight centimeter layer of ice that investigator
Speaker 1: Rikle found six hours later wasn't there when the planes
Speaker 1: started its takeoff role. It was created by the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the crash itself.
Speaker 2: Ruby Thane's chemistry experiment completely dismantles the physical foundation of
Speaker 2: the German report.
Speaker 1: It's undeniable proof, it is.
Speaker 2: But even with this irrefutable science in hand, it takes
Speaker 2: years of relentless campaigning to get anyone in power to listen. Finally,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty seven, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson attends
Speaker 2: a Manchester United Memorial event and he.
Speaker 1: Says something publicly red.
Speaker 2: Yes, he comments to the press that he believes Captain
Speaker 2: Thane was the victim of a massive injustice.
Speaker 1: And that single political comment sparks a total media frenzy.
Speaker 1: The public demands answers, and suddenly the British government launches
Speaker 1: a massive, completely independent inquiry in nineteen sixty eight, and.
Speaker 2: They bring the full weight of modern forensics to bear
Speaker 2: on the evidence.
Speaker 1: The findings are a total vindication for Captain Thane.
Speaker 2: They really are. They conduct advanced photographic analysis on pictures
Speaker 2: taken of the Elizabethan while it was sitting on the
Speaker 2: tarmac before the craft wait.
Speaker 1: I thought the German investigators claimed these grainy photos showed
Speaker 1: white snow accumulating on the wings.
Speaker 2: They did, but the new British analysis proves it was
Speaker 2: simply ambient light reflecting off wet melting surfaces. The heaters
Speaker 2: had been working, just as Dane claimed.
Speaker 1: They also run wind tunnel aerodynamic tests and proved that
Speaker 1: even if there had been the five millimeters of ice
Speaker 1: that Rychel claimed to find, it wouldn't have created enough
Speaker 1: drag to prevent the aircraft from reaching takeoff speed.
Speaker 2: Anyway, the ice theory was mathematically impossible, it was.
Speaker 1: But the final nail in the coffin comes when the
Speaker 1: British inquiry calls a star witness Reinhardt Meyer, a German
Speaker 1: pilot who was one of the very first people to
Speaker 1: reach the wreckage that night, and what does he say.
Speaker 1: Meyer gets on the stand and testifies under oath. He says,
Speaker 1: I looked at the wings right after the crash. There
Speaker 1: was no ice, There's just melting snow. And I told
Speaker 1: Chief Investigator Richel exactly that face to face on the
Speaker 1: tarmac on the night of the crash.
Speaker 2: Wow, So Rachel knew.
Speaker 1: He knew. Rabel had no explanation for why he ignored
Speaker 1: a fellow pilot's eyewitnessed testimony.
Speaker 2: Because admitting Meyer was right meant admitting the slush caused.
Speaker 1: The crash exactly.
Speaker 2: And if the unplowed slush caused the crash, the Munich
Speaker 2: Airport and by extension, the German authorities, were liable for
Speaker 2: the deaths of twenty three people.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, in March nineteen sixty nine, eleven long years after
Speaker 1: the crash, the British government officially and formally clears Captain
Speaker 1: James Thane of all wrongdoing Mighty. They lay the blame
Speaker 1: for the disaster squarely on the Munich airport authorities for
Speaker 1: failing to clear the slush from the runway.
Speaker 2: It is just a deeply bittersweet ending, though.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: While his home country finally exonerated him, the German authorities
Speaker 2: stubbornly refused to ever amend their official ruling, and his airline,
Speaker 2: Thine's Airline never offered him his job back. A man
Speaker 2: who lived to fly never piloted a commercial aircraft again.
Speaker 1: That is just tragic.
Speaker 2: It is the immense stress, the public vitriol and the
Speaker 2: decade long fight took a horrific toll on his health.
Speaker 2: Captain Thane died of a heart attack just a few
Speaker 2: years later, at the age of fifty four.
Speaker 1: It is heartbreaking to think about the years he lost,
Speaker 1: but the legacy of this tragedy and of Fane's refusal
Speaker 1: to surrender is profound.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Ten years after the crash, a completely rebuilt Manchester United team,
Speaker 1: still led by survivor Matt Busby, finally won the European Cup.
Speaker 2: An incredible triumph rising from the ashes of unimaginable loss.
Speaker 1: And Captain Thing's relentless fight. It single handedly forced the
Speaker 1: global aviation industry to rewrite the rule book on runway contamination.
Speaker 2: His stubbornness forced regulators to acknowledge just how deadly slush
Speaker 2: drag truly is today. If you are sitting on a
Speaker 2: plane at a snowy airport and you are wondering why
Speaker 2: you have to sit on the tarmac for twenty minutes
Speaker 2: while trucks plow the runway and spray the wings, this
Speaker 2: exact crash is the reason why he changed everything he did.
Speaker 2: Faine lost his career and arguably his life fighting for
Speaker 2: that truth, but he undoubtedly saved countless thousand lives in
Speaker 2: the process. He left an inscription in a book for
Speaker 2: his daughter that I think perfectly captures the essence of
Speaker 2: his decade in exile.
Speaker 1: What did it say?
Speaker 2: He wrote, The difference between the impossible and the possible
Speaker 2: is merely a measure of man's determination.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is powerful. So what does this all mean
Speaker 1: for you listening to this today? Why does a plane
Speaker 1: crash from nineteen fifty eight matter in our modern lives?
Speaker 2: That's the real question.
Speaker 1: Think back to a tiny detail we mentioned right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the story, before that fatal third takeoff,
Speaker 1: the passengers in that cabin were terrified. Johnny Barry voiced
Speaker 1: what they were all feeling, ever going to get killed?
Speaker 2: They all felt in their gut that something was fundamentally
Speaker 2: wrong after two aborted attempts.
Speaker 1: But human nature and the intense fear of looking like
Speaker 1: a coward in front of their teammates kept anyone from
Speaker 1: standing up, walking to the front, and demanding to get
Speaker 1: off the plane.
Speaker 2: No one wanted to be the person to break the
Speaker 2: social scripts. The pressure to conform just over row their
Speaker 2: own survival instincts.
Speaker 1: So I leave you with this thought, tom all over
Speaker 1: in our own lives, in our own modern, highly regulated workplaces,
Speaker 1: how often does that exact same quiet social pressure, the
Speaker 1: fear of speaking up when something just feels wrong, override
Speaker 1: all our sophisticated safety systems.
Speaker 2: It happens more than we like to admit.
Speaker 1: How often are we sitting on a proverbial freezing runway,
Speaker 1: feeling the surge, but too afraid of what people might
Speaker 1: think to just stand up and say stop.