2nd Shot: Air Crash at Upper East Coast Road

The Singapore Airshow at Changi Exhibition Centre drew 71,000 people over the weekend. Many must have came for the heart-stopping flying displays by the display teams. Unfortunately, this year's displays were a letdown as they featured mainly single aircraft. On Thursday, an aerial display was aborted in front of hundreds of trade visitors after safety was breached - The T-50 Golden Eagle's flight this afternoon was observed to have infringed the safety boundaries and the pilot was instructed to terminate his flying display as a precaution.

At $20 a ticket, the air show was not a free event of course. Now imagine you could watch one free outside your home. Some East Coast Road residents had this "privilege" in 1951, of seeing an aircraft performing aerial stunts over their house. Unfortunately the "performance" did not end with applause nor disappointment, but shock and horror as the aircraft ended in scattered debris with fatalities.

The Straits Times headline of Aug 11, 1951 reads:

A twin-engined R.A.F. Hornet, world's fastest piston-driven plane, crashed on the East Coast Road, Singapore, yesterday afternoon at an estimated speed of 200 miles per hour after performing aerobatics over the sea. The British pilot was killed instantly, and eight people, including four children, living in a row of houses opposite the crash, were injured, when the plane's petrol tanks and ammunition exploded.

Hornet F 3, c. 1948. The crashed Hornet should look like this. (Image credit: wikipedia)

Air crash along Upper East Coast Road. Box in blue shows scene of crash. (Image credit: streetdirectory.com)

It was not to be a flying display. The pilot, Sgt. George Edmund Howson (age 27), was authorized for flying practice but turned the practice into an aerobatics display. Ace-pilot wannabe perhaps? The news report tells us how the display turned into tragedy:

Mrs Ganderton always sat outside, in front of the house in the afternoon, while the children played, and Mrs Nepos and I usually joined her for a drink and chat. When they saw the plane coming in low over the houses from the sea and somersaulting, Mrs Ganderton told me that she admonished the pilot, "Don't play any of your fancy pranks on us, young man." The next moment the plane had crashed on the road right in front of the house and they were screaming with agony. In the garden, Philip's  tricycle and Pamela's toy pram, overturned and scorched, bore mute testimony to the peaceful scene that was so tragically broken.

Scene of crash in garden. I think that is Pamela's overturned and scorched toy pram. Mrs Ganderton and Mrs Nepos could have sat on those chairs before the accident. (Photo credit: SPH)

Pamela (age 3), her brother Philip (age 2) and Michael Alphonso (age 5) were to become fatal casualties of the accident.

(My comment: It is quite unusual for a pilot in RAF to be only a sergeant, can anyone shed some light on this? I thought pilots are either commissioned or warrant officers.)

 Full report of the air crash. Thanks to Siew Min who brought my attention to the air crash.

The explosion of petrol tanks and ammunition damaged a row of houses and injured their occupants. The news report describes the havoc in detail:

A row of seven two-storeyed houses facing the spot received the full force of the explosion. All windows were smashed and the walls splattered with earth. The roof of one house caved in and tiles were broken on the others. One engine of the plane flew over the houses to fall in a lane behind.

I may not have lived in the 1950s but having lived in nearby Bedok South when young, those two-storeyed houses remain fresh in my mind. They stand out as one of a kind along that stretch of Upper East Coast Road. Since they are still standing today, I went back late last year for a second shot:

Second shot of air crash in front of the row of seven two-storeyed houses. Old roads like Upper East Coast were very much narrower in the past, i.e. single carriageway with two lanes. From the pictures, the original road now becomes the two lanes in the easterly direction. Amazingly even the old drain can be traced, if you look carefully.

For the opposite direction, the 1951 press photo shows a long concrete fence behind the wreckage. I nearly missed this one, until Peter guided me to the correct house in the photo. The house #494, with its fence, is still standing behind a bus stop.

The white concrete fence in the 1951 photo hidden by foliage today. The fence is truncated and abruptly ends behind the bus stop. I believe #494 and its neighbour (now the Calvary Assembly of God Church) were originally built as a pair of bungalow houses. We see RAF personnel digging out an engine embedded in the road in front of what is The Calypso today.

Clockwise from left,

(1) The gate pillar, still the same after 58 years. In the old photo, you can see a group of people standing in front of it.

(2) Driveway into #494. The house behind can be seen in the old photo.

(3) The driveway today truncated as a result of "land reclamation" from the government for road widening

View from front of The Calypso. Riviera Residences in the background. "A forested slope" is pretty much my memory of the Parbury side of Upper East Coast Road. Condos like The Summit and The Baycourt came later.

One interesting observation: the government acquired land for road widening (driveway of #494 was much longer) but when lots were resold to developers, the new properties were built further away from the road. As a result the modern lots are much smaller than their antecedent. Next time if you travel along Upper East Coast Road, try to spot properties with frontage closer to the road. Those should be the original lots.

Left: #494 with The Calypso on left and Calvary Assembly of God Church on right.

Right: Hua Yu Wee Seafood with Aldea Blanca on left.

Edit on 20 June 2010: I added the original crash photo from the National Archives because the grandson of the owner of #494 has replied in the comments below.

Related post

1. 1951 Air Crash at Upper East Coast – Final Resting Place of Sergeant Pilot Howson