It does not often happen that when a plane crashes into a mountain, everybody in the aircraft survives the ordeal. It happens even less often that more than half the survivors of such an accident would want, 52 years later, to re-visit the site of the crash and to say thank you to those who rescued them and cared for them in hospital.
Yet this is exactly what has been happening this weekend and the story is worth telling in some detail.
On August 12th, 1946, a plane carrying a party of French Girl Guides to an international Guide camp in Co Dublin crashed in bad weather on Djouce Mountain in Co Wicklow.
At Collinstown Airport, as Dublin Airport was then known, the plane's non-arrival around midday does not appear to have caused undue anxiety. It seems to have been assumed that the aircraft had simply turned back because of stormy weather conditions that morning.
The news that the plane had crashed did not become known until one of the French Guide leaders, who had no idea where she was, reached a house in the Glencree valley that evening.
She had stumbled for about six hours in torrential rain across the mist-covered Wicklow mountainside, narrowly missing the cliffs at Powerscourt Waterfall.
A rescue party of three set out from that house in atrocious conditions to try, with only the sketchiest of details, to find the site of the crash.
Meanwhile, a second Guide leader, along with the pilot of the plane, who had set out for help in the opposite direction, found their way to Luggala Lodge, the secluded home of Lord Oranmore and Browne beside Lough Tay. They were taken to St Michael's Hospital, Dun Laoghaire, from where ambulances were dispatched even though no one at this time knew the location of the crash.
Wreckage found
It was midnight, almost 12 hours after the crash, before the wrecked aeroplane was discovered in a swirling mist on a gale-swept ridge at an altitude of 1,800 feet.
The Guides, aged between 13 and 17, eight of whom were seriously injured, were huddled together in the fuselage with one remaining leader and two members of the crew. By then further ambulances had been dispatched from Dublin and Wicklow to Boleyhorrigan Bridge, near Luggala, the nearest road to the crash, where an old house known as Sheepbank Cottage became a casualty station manned by gardai, Civil Defence, the Red Cross and the St John Ambulance Brigade.
After 19 people were brought down with great difficulty, it was realised the plane's navigator was missing. A search party returned to the scene and found him some distance from the wreckage.
However, it was only after the casualties were taken to St Michael's and St Bricin's Hospitals that it was discovered one of the Guides was also missing and, after a second night on the mountain, she was eventually found by a party of Red Cross workers from Bray some distance from the plane, injured, disorientated, exhausted and suffering from exposure. How the aircraft came to be flying so low in a mountainous area continues to be something of a mystery. The flight, which had left Paris at 9 o'clock that morning, was uneventful until the plane approached the Irish coast, where weather conditions suddenly deteriorated as it flew into a severe storm which had been causing disruption since early morning throughout eastern Ireland, damaging houses and , flooding roads. Several bridges had been swept away.
Nil visibility
The plane appears to have crossed the Wicklow coast in nil visibility, flying in a north-westerly direction at an altitude of around 1,800 feet into an area where half-a-dozen or more summits were over 2,000 feet, including Djouce which rises to almost 2,400 feet.
The plane struck the mountain's southern ridge with a glancing blow which tore off the undercarriage and the engines, which may have absorbed most of the impact. It then rebounded into the air before hitting the ground for a second time, and slid for some distance down the far side of the ridge.
Had the plane been flying 20 or 30 feet lower, the crash would almost certainly have resulted in the deaths of most, if not all, concerned, but fortunately the fuselage remained virtually intact and there was no fire.
The aircraft was a Junkers JU 52, a converted German wartime troop carrier, and the fact that the passengers were all seated sideways, facing one another on long benches rather than in conventional seats, meant they were thrown down the length of the plane on impact.
Despite their ordeal and injuries, eight of the girls were discharged within 48 hours, and all the Guides, as well as the crew of the plane, subsequently made good recoveries.
The site of the crash was preserved by gardai for several days while the wreckage was inspected by officials from the aviation section of the Department of Industry and Commerce and the French Air Force.
After vital components were removed, the remainder of the wreckage was recycled by local farmers, and smaller pieces were picked up by hill-walking souvenir hunters. Within a few years nothing remained to mark the scene.
As a result of this, and several similar crashes, a new Ground Proximity Warning System, which gives an audible warning in the cockpit if the aircraft comes within a pre-set height of closing terrain, became mandatory on public transport aircraft.
Survivors return Last Saturday, fifty-two years later, 14 survivors arrived back in Ireland to re-visit the scene of the crash, to visit the two hospitals, and to meet again some of those involved in their rescue and subsequent recovery.
A committee of women, who had been members of the Irish Girl Guides at the time of the crash, arranged a weekend programme of events, visits and reunions. They sought out personnel who had helped in the rescue operations as well as some of the medical staff on duty at the time.
Leading the French party is Ms Chantal Lacoin who, as a 21-year-old guide leader, had also been in charge of the French Guides in 1946. It was she who, though injured, managed to reach the house in Glencree to alert the rescuers to the accident.
After the weekend programme of events in Dublin and Wicklow, the visitors are to spend a week touring the west of Ireland before returning to France.