croydon (367) strand kommune (5) holtaheia (3) sekkepipe (2) lanfranc (1) stavanger aircrash (1) august 1961 (1) rosalind jones (1) quentin green (1) the bergen pipe band (1)
On August 9 th 1961, two masters and 34 boys from Lanfranc School (now Archbishop Lanfranc) in Croydon, left for a holiday in Norway.
Delayed for five hours by engine trouble they took off at 1329 hours GMT from London Airport to fly to Stavanger in south-west Norway on a Vickers Viking code-named ‘Papa Mike’. By 1603 hours GMT they were in radio contact with Stavanger’s Sola Airport but before touch-down the plane disappeared. That night turned into an unending nightmare for their families. On August 10 th ‘Papa Mike’ was found – crashed into a mountain called Holtaheia. There were no survivors. It was a horrific, unbelievable tragedy. A
‘The Lanfranc Boys’ (ISBN 978-0-9531890-3-8.) RRP Price £12.99, by author Rosalind Jones (sister of one of the boys) tells moving previously untold stories of what happened.