Background
In February 1960 an Alitalia flight enroute from Naples, via Campiano Airport, Rome and Gander in Newfoundland to Idlewild Airport, New York, crashed near Shannon Airport, killing 34 of the 52 people on board. Amid the carnage at the crash site, a few black and white photographs of individuals were gathered from the debris. These were photographs had been among the personal belongings of the passengers and crew. They remained in private hands until 2024, when they were donated to Clare Museum.
The crash scene
The doomed Douglas DC-7C stopped over at Shannon to take on some 7,000 gallons of aviation fuel enroute to New York. It departed the airport to continue its journey to its next scheduled stopover at Gander, Newfoundland, shortly after 1.30 am on the 25th February (it is often recorded in error as being the 26th February). For reasons that were never established, about a mile from the airport, the DC-7C seemed to lose power and bank heavily to the left. This caused the wing to clip the walls of Clonloghan cemetery beside the ruins of a 10th century church. It was fatal for the plane and its passengers. The aircraft failed to recover, and it exploded on impact in the field adjacent to church site. The crash happened close to the home of the O’Dea family, who lived Waverly House. Irene O’Dea, who was a nurse at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, and her family members, were soon on the scene helping survivors. Irene’s story was recorded by RTE at the time. People came from a wide area to render assistance. Garda Ted Finlay was on duty in Ennis that night. He was a young member of An Garda Siochána, the Irish police force, and had only joined in 1959. It was a clear, dark night, and he was standing at D’Arcy’s corner on O’Connell Street, when from the direction of Shannon, he saw the sky light up in the distance. He and his colleague called the Garda station from a kiosk. It was clear by the lack of response and the light in the sky, that there had been a major incident at Shannon Airport. Ted and his colleague ran back to the Garda Station and alerted the emergency services in the town. After about 30 minutes he was at the site of the crash at Clonloghan, near Newmarket-on-Fergus, a scene of utter devastation. Upon arrival, he found the body of a deceased young air stewardess in the tail section of the plane, her head slumped down. She was Eva Lilli Linder, originally from Milan. Sixty years later he could recall the smell of burnt flesh and aviation fuel, dead sheep, and that sunglasses were prominent among the personal effects, strewn over a wide area.
The photographs
Among the debris, Garda Finlay found three black-and-white photographs, which he kept for the next six decades. The identity of the people in the photos is unknown, and the images were obviously carried among the belongings of one or more passengers on board.
Photo of an unidentified young girl, found among the wreckage.
One photo shows a young girl with ribbons in her hair, posing in front of a kitchen dresser, with her left and hand in her pocket and her right foot on a chair.
Photographs of four children, found in the wreckage of Alitalia flight 618. Who are they?
Another photo has serrated edges and features a boy in a dicky bow and suit, and three girls, in very similar white dresses. This picture still has mud on it from the field where it was recovered all those years ago.
Studio photograph of an unidentified young woman.
The third photograph is a portrait of a woman in a dress in a studio, standing, with left hand on the back of a chair while holding something in her right hand, by her side.
A photograph of a young couple, found in the wreckage.
The final photograph is a head-and-shoulders shot of a young couple. The woman is wearing a floral dress, while the man is in a suit and a tie.
Who is in the photographs?
These photographs are now part of the museum collection at Clare Museum and serve as a poignant reminder of the human cost of this tragedy. We would like to identify those in the pictures. If you are a relative of a passenger or crew member on this flight, do you know the identities of the people in these photographs? Are they family members? Were they victims? Perhaps you are one of the children pictured? If you have any information, please make contact at claremuseum@clarecoco.ie. We would love to put names to the faces in these photographs.
For further information on the tragedy
On 11th December 2024, Mr Peter McGarry gave a talk on the crash of Alitalia flight 618 as part of the museum’s monthly lecture series. Mr McGarry published a book called Falling Stars: lost stories from Shannon Airport crashes and has carried out extensive research on the crash of flight 618. The talk he gave that night is available to listen to here.