The Superga tragedy was a plane crash that occurred May 4, 1949. At 17:03, the Fiat G.212 of the airline ALI, signed I-ELCE, with the entire Grande Torino team on board, crashed into the wall of the rear embankment of the Basilica of Superga, which rises on the Turin hill; the victims were 31. The plane was taking the team home from Lisbon, where they had played a friendly match against Benfica, organized to help the captain of the Lusitanian team Francisco Ferreira, in financial difficulties. In the accident the whole team of Torino lost their lives, winning five consecutive championships from the 1942-1943 season to the 1948-1949 season and that constituted almost all of the Italian national team. In the incident the team leaders and the carers, the crew and three well-known Italian sports journalists also died: Renato Casalbore (founder of Tuttosport); Renato Tosatti and Luigi Cavallero (La Nuova Stampa). The task of identifying the bodies was entrusted to the former technical commissioner of the National Vittorio Pozzo, who had transplanted almost all of Turin into the national team. Sauro Tomà from La Spezia, injured at the meniscus, did not take part in the Portuguese trip; reserve goalkeeper Renato Gandolfi didn't take that flight (he was preferred by the third goalkeeper Dino Ballarin, brother of the quarterback Aldo, who interceded for him), the radio commentator Nicolò Carosio (blocked by the confirmation of his son), Luigi Giuliano (captain of the Primavera del Toro and recently on a permanent basis in the first team, was blocked by an influence) and the former CT of the National one and journalist Vittorio Pozzo (Turin preferred to assign the place to Cavallero). Invited to join the team for the friendly match by Valentino Mazzola, Tommaso Maestrelli, while playing in Rome, did not take flight because he could not renew his passport at the police station. Even the president of Turin, Ferruccio Novo, did not take part in the trip because he was sick with influenza. The Turin was proclaimed winner of the table championship and the opponents of the round, as well as Turin itself, lined up the youth teams in the remaining four games. On the day of the funeral almost one million people took to the streets in Turin to pay their last respects to the players. The shock was such that the following year the national team went to the World Cup in Brazil traveling by ship. The Fiat G.212 trimotor, with I-ELCE brands, of Avio Linee Italiane, takes off from Lisbon airport at 9:40 am on Wednesday 4 May 1949. Commander of the aircraft is Lieutenant Colonel Meroni. The flight lands at 13:00 at Barcelona airport. At 2.50 pm the I-ELCE takes off with destination Turin-Aeritalia airport. The route followed casts over the trimotor Cap de Creus, Toulon, Nice, Albenga, Savona. At the height of Savona the plane turns north, in the direction of the subalpine capital, where it is expected to arrive in about thirty minutes. The weather in Turin is bad. At 16:55 Aeritalia airport tells pilots the weather situation: clouds almost in contact with the ground, rain showers, strong libeccio with gusts, very poor horizontal visibility (40 meters). The tower also asks for a position report. After a few minutes of silence at 4:59 pm the answer arrives: "Quota 2,000 meters. QDM on Pino, then cut on Superga". In Pino Torinese, located between Chieri and Baldissero Torinese, south-east of Turin, there is a VDF radio station (VHF direction finder), to provide a QDM (magnetic route to be taken to get closer to a radio assistance) on demand. Once on the perpendicular of Pino, putting 290 degrees of bow you are aligned with the runway of the Aeritalia, to around 9 kilometers of distance, to 305 meters of altitude. A little further north of Pino Torinese is the hill of Superga with the eponymous basilica, in a dominant position at 669 meters of altitude. It was hypothesized that - due to the strong wind at the left side - the plane during the turn could have suffered a drift towards starboard, which displaced it from the descent axis and aligned it, instead of with the track, with the hill of Superga; as a result of recent investigations, the possibility emerged that the altimeter had stopped at 2,000 meters and therefore led pilots to believe that they were at this altitude, while they were only 600 meters above the ground. At 5:03 pm the plane with the Grande Torino on board, having made the turn to the left, placed in horizontal flight and aligned to prepare for landing, instead we crash into the rear embankment of the Basilica of Superga. The pilot, who thought he had the Superga hill on his right, saw it instead suddenly emerge (speed 180 km/h, visibility 40 meters) and did not have the time to do anything: in fact, they could not be seen from the arrangement of the wreckage, attempts to hang up or turn. The only part of the aircraft that has remained partially intact is the fletching.
- 4 жыл бұрын
Superga air disaster, Superga, Turin, Piedmont, Italy, Europe
- Рет қаралды 1,173
Пікірлер