Limerick filmmaker documents Shannon Airport crashes
ON THE morning of February 26, 1960, Flight 618 arrived at Shannon Airport for its first stopover to continue its journey across the Atlantic. But seconds after taking off, the plane of the Italian airline Alitalia lost altitude.
The aircraft slammed into the ground and burst into flames in a field beyond a cemetery. Only 18 of the 52 people on board survived.
That’s the story Limerick man Peter McGarry has been researching as part of a series of documentaries he is working on.
Through his project, he aims to document the major air disasters that occurred at Shannon Airport, between 1946 and 1961.
“The documentary I'm working on at the moment is concerning the crash of an Italian airliner in Shannon in February of 1960. I'm doing a series of documentaries. Bit by bit, I’m going through them. Once I have the Italian one done, my next target, which will be in the autumn, will be a Dutch airline,” says Peter.
It is his background in aviation that informed Peter’s interest in aircraft and plane crashes.
“In the 1990s, I was working with aircraft trading companies in Shannon and the UK. I also spent a little while with BAE Systems, which is a British military contractor. But one way or the other, I was always interested in aviation and in history.”
According to Peter, documenting these crashes is important because they’re “falling into historical records.” He aims to create documentaries before too much time passes.
He explains: “I think it is important to create these documentaries on the crashes because they are significant events, but becoming historic events and people who had first-hand experience, who could talk to you about the crashes, are basically dying out.”
Peter’s first documentary received 17,000 views on his YouTube channel.
“It also led to a number of radio interviews, so there was a massive amount of information or interest expressed in that documentary, but that documentary was a kind of a whistle-stop tour of five crashes. There were five major crashes in Shannon, so that one was covering everything. In a certain amount of detail, but as I said, right now what I'm doing is I'm addressing them one by one.”
Even though his interest came from his background in aviation, Peter says what interests him more now are the stories of those involved in the plane crashes.
“When I learned about these crashes, it was because my background is aviation that I was always interested in what went wrong, or what was the cause of this? Individually, but as time has rolled on, I developed an interest for the personal stories that came out of it and, and the stories of people who have been in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he notes.
After all of his research, is Peter wary of flying?
“I’ve done a bit of flying over the years myself, I've always loved aviation. My philosophy is that if you're going to go, it's gonna happen, you know? So, it’s not something that has put me off,” he says.
When they hear of his interest in those stories, people often reach out to Peter.
“People often come out of the woodwork and say, I've got a story about that or I've got something belonging to that.”
Once upon a time, he even received the coffee pot which was on one of the crashed aircraft. Now, it’s on his bookshelf.
“It’s just extraordinary. I often look at the coffee pot and I say to my wife, I wonder who had the last cup of coffee.”
As part of his next project, Peter will be working on the KLM Flight 633 which was ditched on a mudbank in the River Shannon in September 1954.
The film-maker would like to know if any Limerick Leader readers might have some stories or memorablia to share.