February 6, 1958: The Munich Air Disaster

February 6, 1958. It may be hard to imagine a time when the English soccer team Manchester United was worthy of delight and sympathy, rather than disgust and loathing. But Manager Matt Busby had built a team that had won the English Football League in 1956 and 1957, despite an average age of 21 and 22, hence the nickname "the Busby Babes." By the standards of the time, they were producing not only great results, but "beautiful football."

They were returning from a European Cup Quarterfinal match against Red Star Belgrade, a team from the capital of Yugoslavia. After defeated them in the 1st leg, 2-1 at Old Trafford in Salford, the game at Partizan Stadium -- oddly, the home of Red Star's arch-rivals, Partizan -- ended in a 3-3 draw, allowing United to advance on aggregate.

They flew out of Belgrade, and stopped to refuel in Munich, in what was then called West Germany. The plane tried to take off in a snowstorm, and crashed.

There were 23 people killed, but, amazingly, 21 survived. Among the dead were Man United players Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Tommy Taylor and Liam "Billy" Whelan, all killed instantly. An 8th player, Duncan Edwards, already the most-lauded of the Busby Babes, died in a hospital 15 days later.

Duncan Edwards

Two other players, Jackie Blanchflower and Johnny Berry, survived, but were hurt so badly that they never played again. Busby himself was badly injured. Goalkeeper Harry Gregg, despite his own injuries, managed to rescue some passengers before the plane exploded.

Assistant manager Jimmy Murphy was not with the United team: A Welshman, he was also the manager of the Wales national team, who were also playing on February 5. They defeated Israel, 2-0 at Ninian Park in Cardiff.

An American newsreel covered the crash, suggesting that it was, for England, as if the Milwaukee Braves, who had won the World Series 4 months earlier, had crashed.

In spite of the crash, Murphy filled in for Busby, and signed some emergency acquisitions, and guided United to advance to the 1958 FA Cup Final, losing to Bolton Wanderers. Busby returned to managing duties for the 1958-59 season, and built a new group of Babes, which won the 1963 FA Cup and the League Championship in 1965 and 1967.

The only United players to survive the crash and to play for the '65 and '67 champions were Bill Foulkes, and the far better-remembered Bobby Charlton, who also went on to be a key member (along with his brother Jack, who played for Leeds United) of England's World Cup win in 1966. 

Along with Sir Bobby and Foulkes, that United team is remembered for the Scottish star Denis Law and the Northern Ireland superstar George Best. Charlton, Law and Best are remembered as "United's Holy Trinity," and a statue of them stands outside their stadium, Old Trafford.

Still, with several good players killed, the course of English football was changed: Without it, the subsequent return to glory of Wolverhampton Wanderers, a.k.a. Wolves, the team United dethroned as the defining team in England, might not have happened. Nor might the rise of Tottenham Hotspur (captained by Jackie's brother Danny Blanchflower), and the 2 Liverpool-based teams, Liverpool and Everton. And it might not have taken until United's win in 1968 for an English team to win the European Cup. (Glasgow, Scotland-based Celtic became the 1st British team to win it, in 1967.)

Matt Busby, after the 1968 European Cup win

Today, there are United fans, and English people in general, who are convinced that, had the crash not happened, and those United players (Whelan was from Ireland, and Blanchflower and Gregg were from Northern Ireland, but the rest were English) had been available to play, England would have won the 1958 and 1962 World Cups. No, they wouldn't have: They still wouldn't have been better than the Brazil of Garrincha and the young Pelé.

Instead, managed by Walter Winterbottom, England did not advance to the Group Stage. Murphy coached Wales to the Quarterfinals before losing to Brazil.

The Munich Air Disaster is commemorated at Old Trafford, with the Munich Tunnel, which the players walk through to get to the field; and the Munich Clock, with the date of the crash inscribed on it and the time permanently set to the time of the crash, 3:04 PM (in Manchester, 4:04 in Munich). It now stands above the front gate and a statue of Busby.

United fans, naturally, get sensitive when opposing fans talk or sing about airplanes, or call the team "the Munichs." But that's no excuse for United's fans, not exactly known for having class, to call Liverpool fans "murderers" because of the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters of the 1980s, neither of which were murders, or the fault of Liverpool fans.

Other plane crashes to wipe out nearly entire soccer teams include the Superga crash of 1949, which ended a decade of dominance of Italy's Torino FC (among those killed was Valentino Mazzola, a big star of the time, whose son Sandro Mazzola would be a legend with Internazionale Milano in the 1960s); a 1987 crash that killed the entire roster of Alianza Lima of Peru; a 1989 crash that killed 11 players from Suriname; and a 1993 crash in Gabon that killed several members of the national team of Zambia.

Crashes also wiped out, or nearly wiped out, the California Polytechnic State University football team in 1960, the football teams of both Wichita State and Marshall University in 1970 (the latter crash inspiring the recent film We Are Marshall), the 1977 crash that killed the University of Evansville basketball team; and, on February 15, 1961, a crash in Belgium that killed 73, including the entire U.S. figure skating team, men and women alike. U.S. figure skating would not even begin to recover from that until 1968, when Peggy Fleming won her Olympic Gold Medal.

*

February 6, 1958 was a Thursday. It was the off-season for Major League Baseball and the NFL. There were no NBA games played that day. But there were 2 NHL games played that day:

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Boston Bruins, 4-1 at the Boston Garden. Bobby Hull scored twice, and was looking like he would be awarded the Calder Memorial Trophy as Rookie of the Year. Instead, it went to Frank Mahovlich of the Toronto Maple Leafs -- who, like the New York Rangers, were not scheduled to play on this day.

In 1986, Hawks management found the team's original 1926 charter, and discovered that the team's name was officially spelled as one word, "Blackhawks," and that's how it's been ever since. Before that, it was always listed as two words, "Black Hawks."

* And the Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 1-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Dickie Moore scored for the Habs, Nick Mickoski for the Wings.