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 black cloud descended and people throughout Britain were devastated. Many knew the boys and families. Croydon suddenly was world famous because the air crash was the worst disaster to happen to any school in peacetime. The official enquiry as to why Papa Mike crashed was unresolved. They were wasted lives.

‘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.

 ‘The Lanfranc Boys’ has a Foreword by Sir Michael Parkinson, (who as a young reporter covered the story for The Daily Express at the time), and an endorsement from Monica Porter of The Daily Mail’s ‘Missing and Found’ column. Vividly readable because it is compiled from first hand accounts, the book starts with everyone alive and living their lives in and out of Lanfranc School or as part of the ‘Eagle family’. Premonitions of disaster occurred to many family and friends. The book details the flight out to Norway and the last recorded messages; the search to find Papa Mike; the painstaking rescue of the victims; and the aftermath of the tragedy in Croydon. It also discusses new theories as to why the plane crashed.