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The History Hour

The Munich Air Disaster

The History Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, History, Personal Journals

4.4913 Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2018

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The plane crash that killed eight of Manchester United's top players, the courage of the British Suffragettes, uncovering South Africa's nuclear secrets, plus tracking down Nazis in South America and the attack on a South Korean airliner ahead of the Seoul Olympics.

(Photo: Plane wreckage at Munich airport - AFP/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome this is the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson

0:05.2

the past brought to life by those who were there. This week hunting for Nazis we hear from the

0:10.7

couple who tracked down Klaus Barbie.

0:13.0

It's an awful experience to see that a monster can be exactly like you, except that he is a monster.

0:20.0

Plus, 100 years after women secured the right to vote in Britain we recall the bitterness of that struggle

0:26.8

and South Africa's bid for the bomb in the 1980s.

0:30.8

They had a secret uranium enrichment project and if you could know how much electricity they were using and you could know how much uranium they could have enriched by what time and therefore how many bombs they possibly could have

0:43.6

have made.

0:44.6

That's all coming up later in the podcast.

0:46.6

But first, one of the most famous football clubs in the world,

0:50.2

arguably one of the leading brand names in the world, never mind sports brands, Manchester United.

0:56.0

Along with the storied history of success and glamour on the football pitch,

1:00.0

there is also the club's darkest hour. 60 years ago, 8 of United's famous Busby Baves team,

1:06.8

were among those killed in the Munich air disaster. The dead included some of the cream of the

1:12.0

crop of young players nurtured by the manager Matt Busby.

1:15.2

The goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, survived the crash and went back into the wreckage several times to help save others.

1:22.2

Simon Watts has his story.

1:24.0

On the 6th of February in 1958,

1:31.0

one of the greatest football teams in history was wiped out.

1:35.0

Here is the news.

1:36.5

So far we know there are 23 survivors after Manchester United's

1:40.3

air crash at Munich this afternoon. The aircraft was a twin-engine

...

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