Superga, 4 May 1949: story of the last flight of the Grande Torino

The history and life of the Grande Torino players shattered at hours 5.05pm of the May 4, 1949 against an embankment on the eastern side of the Basilica of Superga, on the top of the hill overlooking Turin. The plane that was bringing them home after the trip to Lisbon he had crashed into the wall surrounded at that moment by a very thick blanket of fog and pouring rain. The most admired team in Italy and Europe, the pride of the country that was laboriously shaking off the rubble of the war, including the coach, masseurs and technical management as well as three journalists and the crew. THE dead on the spot they are 31. Let’s reconstruct, with the help of news reports and testimonies of the time, the story of that cursed flight 70 years ago.

Lisbon Airport: 9.52am on 4 May 1949

Grande Torino was away in Lisbon where they had played a friendly match against Benfica with the aim of raising funds for the Portuguese team in serious economic difficulty. The return flight was scheduled for the morning of May 4, 1949 from the airport of the Portuguese capital. The plane rented by the Granata was waiting for them on the runway ALI (Avio Linee Italiane) then owned by Fiat, which also owned the management of the old Turin-Aeritalia airport. The aircraft, a three-motor, was also built by the Piedmontese giant Fiat G.212 almost new (it was delivered in 1947) and registered with the brands I-ELCE. The Commander was piloting the plane Pierluigi Meroni, a veteran of the Regia Aeronautica who had earned the Silver Medal in 1941 by flying bombers very similar to the three-engined airliner that was supposed to bring the champions back to Italy. Italian football idols took their places on the seats Valentino Mazzola, Guglielmo Gabetto, the Ballarin brothers, Valerio Bagicalupo, Ezio Loik, Mario Rigamonti and the technical staff with the technical director Egri Erbstein and the coach Leslie Lievesley.

At 9:52, right on time, the large wheels of the G.212 left the runway disappearing into the engine nacelles. The cart will touch the ground again a Barcelona for refueling operations. The grenade players go down to the ground and cross paths with the players Milan, in turn heading to Madrid for a friendly match. They will be the last to see the Italian champions alive. They were the 1.15pm.

Shortly after 2.00 pm, refueled, the G.212 took off again for the final leg with destination Turin-Aeritalia. The flight proceeded smoothly over the southern coast of France to the VOR of Savonawhere I-ELCE required the activation of the beacon of Novi Ligure to set the magnetic approach route in the final phase of the flight. The weather over Liguria was not optimal, but not terrible either. However, the weather conditions towards the Turin runway were rapidly worsening, a situation that made the crew decide to lower themselves to an altitude of 2,000 metres, where for the last time it was possible to see the terrain from the windows before it disappeared into hiding from the thick cloud cover.

The last minutes of the flight and the tragedy

About 3-8pm minutes estimated from the Turin runway, the three-motor crew again requested the geometric survey from the radio beacons of Novi and Savona. Shaken by the south-westerly wind and lashed by the pouring rain, I-ELCE entered into instrument flight and recontacted Turin at 4.55pm to obtain the weather report. The tower replied: “Turin: calm, visibility 1,200 metres. Present weather continuous rain, past weather rain. Low clouds 8/8 layers and fractostrates limit 480 metres. In all directions over the mountains, invisible stationary. Superga: invisible sky. North wind 10 knots, visibility 40 meters: present weather continuous rain, past weather rain: in all directionsinvisible downwards.”

Conditions therefore very difficult for a safe approach to the track. Normally, and in particular at the time of the events when radio navigation did not have technologically advanced toolswe would have opted for what is called in aeronautical jargon QCOi.e. the diversion of the flight to a safer airport, in this case Malpensa or Linate. But the order from Turin never arrived, while the bow of the G.212 was unconsciously pointing towards the Superga hill hidden by the blanket of clouds. At 5.02pm the crew called the Turin tower for the last time, to confirm the angle of approach to the runway, confirmed at 285°. After the greetings of the Commander and the radio operator, silence. They were the 5.05pm and the tragedy occurred in a fraction of a second against the wall of the Basilica of Superga.

The testimony from inside the Basilica of Superga

Don Tancredi Ricca he was the chaplain of the basilica of Superga. Shortly before 5pm on May 4, 1949 he was in his study looking out the window obscured by pouring rain and thick fog. It was then that he heard the roar of an approaching plane, which he didn’t pay much attention to because the basilica designed by Juvarra was a point of reference for planes heading towards Turin. Moments later however, the roar of the three piston engines became deafening and was followed moments later by an explosion that shook the marble floors. Then an unreal silence, broken again only by the pounding of the rain. Don Ricca didn’t even have time to leave his room when he heard a voice pierce the silence: “A plane crashed!“, he heard someone shout from below.

When he went out into the fog he discovered the tragedy. The still live flames enveloped the wreckage of the plane that accompanied the Granata champions, scattered between the Superga wall and the embankment against which the fatal impact had occurred. Only the aft part of the fuselage and the tail feathers remained almost intact, leaning ominously against the thick surrounding wall. From subsequent reconstructions by the Authorities, it was understood dynamics of the accident. The three-engined aircraft, in instrument flight a zero visibilityimpacted the ground a 4 meters from the embankment with the left wing coming off cleanly. Suddenly yawing to the right, the other wing also hit the embankment generating the fire while in a fraction of a second (at a speed of around 180 km/h and with the nose pulled up due to the impact) the fuselage hit the wall of the basilica, disintegrating. The cockpit with its occupants broke down a door and entered the basilica, into one of the rooms adjacent to a long corridor. The motorcentral he ended up on the second floor and then, breaking through the floor, fell back into the same room where he will be found bodies of Meroni and co-pilot Cesare Biancardi.

When the flames began to fade, the first rescuers who arrived on site together with Don Ricca realized the seriousness of the accident. The passengers, grenade samples and their companions were piled into an area of just 2 square meters due to the violence of the impact, while their luggage was found almost intact in the garden below protected by the stern which remained almost intact.

The hypotheses on the disaster that shocked the Italians

The first hypothesis on the causes of the Superga tragedy ranged from the poor preparation of the crew to the instrumental flight (contradicted by the note and certified Commander skills Meroni in the “blind flight”), therefore by a possible fault or error in the detection altimetric during the last phase of the flight. Even this last possibility will be contested by the fact that the Fiat G.212 was equipped with more altimeters (pilot, co-pilot and radio operator) and that a simultaneous failure of all altitude indicators would have been statistically unlikely. From the recovery of the instruments after the impact it was clear that the calibration of the same had resulted correct in the parameters set with indications from the ground on atmospheric pressure.

The flight from Lisbon to Turin was a flight “charter“, i.e. agreed directly between Torino FC and the airline. Following the disaster, a hypothetical reason why it was chosen not to divert the flight to Milan despite the prohibitive weather could have been identified in the possible pressures on the crew by the company executives who would have insistently requested to land directly in Turin given that the team was tired following the many commitments of the previous days.

But the hypothesis perhaps more accredited today it seems to reside in the limitations of on-board and ground instrumentation available to civil aviation 70 years ago. Due to the approximation of instrument navigation and the lack of standardization in communications between the tower and the aircraft, a slight error in heading and altitude (in terms of a few seconds or a few tens of meters) which would have brought the G.212 on a collision course with the basilica. It must be taken into account that at the time of the fatal flight the three-motor aircraft was fatal he wasn’t gifted nor of radio altimeter nor of horizontal radar, which could have warned the crew in good time of the presence of the rapidly approaching obstacle. According to experts, the action of the strong southwest wind which was blowing on the heights of Turin and which could have shifted the angle of approach of I-ELCE to the runway by a few degrees, just 9 kilometers as the crow flies from the point of impact.

A human error therefore, most likely caused unconsciously due to the reduced safety in instrument flying in those years or due to an incorrect interpretation of the charts when the view of the ground disappeared from the eyes of the crew. And by those of the Grande Torino players, unaware of their tragic fate for the entire duration of that flight that will bring Italy back into the mourning that seemed to have vanished with the end of the war.