Britannia Crash – 6 November 1957

On 6 November 1957 at about midday on the morning shift at Downend Garage with my oppo, Bert Blackley, a veteran of World War One, we heard the din of an overhead aircraft flying low.  “That sounds like trouble”, Bert said, and then came a terrific explosion. By the time we rushed out from the little office, we were too late to see the plane’s terrible downward slide but it had begun to disintegrate, and we were showered by tiny flecks of sticky black dust. Then there came a great column of smoke, black and mushroom shaped like the terrible symbol of our age. The first thought that came to my mind was that somebody had indeed dropped The Bomb. People came out from everywhere and ran about shouting “What’s happened?” “Did you see it?”  What’s going on?” Gradually we discovered that a Bristol Britannia, known as “the Whispering Giant” which was on a test flight had crashed just 400 yards beyond the garage near Overndale Road. The pilot and crew valiantly managed to avoid a nearby housing estate, and brought the aircraft down in a field where it exploded in Bracey Woods, now renamed Britannia Woods. Tragically all aboard were killed, eight crew and seven technicians. We watched from the forecourt as first came the Police cars, then ambulances, and then, as I noted disgustedly in my diary “inevitably the sightseers, rubbernecking their way into the chaos of the tragedy.” Bert and I did not join them.