From an Ulsterman's photo album ... his picture of aircraft that carried Busby's doomed babes

By Eddie McIlwaine – 29 January 2008

It is the last picture taken half a century ago before this tragic plane crashed at Munich killing many of the Manchester United football team.

The historic photo of The Lord Burghley, an Elizabethan AS-57 Ambassador air liner was taken by retired engineer Trevor Moffet on the apron at the old Nutt’s Corner Airport on February 2, 1958 — just four days before the tragedy.

He took the picture before being escorted on board for a close-up look at the controls.

Twenty-three victims died in the snow on that terrible afternoon of February 6, 1958.And now as the 50th anniversary is about to be commemorated, Mr Moffet (69) is opening up his album again.

He was 19 years old and lived at Largy Road, Crumlin, not far from Nutt’s Corner, which is now a distribution centre for Lidl.

“My next door neighbour was the air traffic control manager at Nutt’s Corner,” Trevor explains, “and he arranged with the airport police for me to have a conducted tour of aircraft on the Belfast to London route that Sunday.

“I was on board The Lord Burghley for 30 minutes after taking my picture which... I had no idea was going to be the last shot of the aircraft in one piece which was the information BEA gave me later.

“My memory of the air crash when it happened four days after I clicked my camera at Nutt’s Corner is of comforting a colleague, David Hartley, who came from Manchester and who had signed schoolboy forms for United.

“We were together in the offices of heating contractors

GN Haden in Linenhall Street, Belfast, when word came through that The Lord Burghley had come down and he was stunned at the deaths of players he knew from his time at the club.

“The Elizabethan was a comparatively new aircraft on the Belfast route and when The Lord Burghley flew over my home on take off from Nutt’s Corner her lights used to shine right into my bedroom...

“When I sent a copy of my photograph to Old Trafford I was informed that the picture of the aircraft would be placed in United’s museum.”

That picture stirred the young Moffet’s interest in photography and he has been snapping pictures around the province ever since.

See Munich Remembered, our 40-page souvenir special to mark the 50th anniversary of the disaster