Sixty years after its crash, the debris of a plane removed in the Pyrenees

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: RAYMOND ROIG / AFP 19:32 pm, September 24, 2023

Forty volunteers conducted a clean-up operation on Saturday and Sunday to remove the remaining debris from a plane that crashed more than 60 years ago on the Canigou, an emblematic mountain in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The Derby Aviation plane was on a flight from London to Perpignan when it crashed one night in October 1961, killing all 34 passengers and crew on board, mostly British.

"I received a message in my mailbox saying that we had no news of a plane that should have landed at midnight and that we had to be ready to leave," Jean-Pierre Bobo, who was part of the first rescue team on the scene when he was a young member of the Alpine club, told AFP. "When we arrived, the weather was grey and foggy and there was an awful smell: a mixture of kerosene and human flesh," he said.

The investigation concluded that there was a navigational error

Now 82 years old, this retired history teacher is also scientific advisor to the Canigou joint union, at the initiative of this clean-up with the Mountain Wilderness Catalunya association and the Cortalets refuge, located a few dozen minutes walk from the crash site. "I was moved today: it's a page of my life, you can't have been confronted with it at 20 years old without being marked," he said.

>>

READ ALSO – Loire-Atlantique: what we know about the crash of a tourist plane piloted by Gérard Leclerc

Some parts of the craft had been recovered at the time of the accident for the purposes of the investigation, which concluded a navigational error, but most of the wreckage had remained on the flanks of the Canigou, at an altitude of just over 2,000m. Throughout the weekend, a dozen volunteers cut the cabin using disc machines and a thermal chainsaw, while others searched the rocks and rhododendrons for smaller debris.

"It's a kind of garbage dump in the mountains"

"There are everywhere, buried or buried, small blunt pieces that can hurt animals... It's a kind of garbage dump in the mountains," says Thomas Dulac, manager of the Cortalets refuge. The Canigou joint union will leave a part of the plane near the hiking trail, the GR 10, to recall the accident and plans to install a commemorative plaque. Some parts of the carcass must be sent to the aviation museum of Bagnères-de-Luchon in Haute-Garonne and Thomas Dulac will keep some of them in his refuge. The rest will be deposited at the dump.