The
Superga air disaster took place on Wednesday, 4 May 1949, when a plane carrying almost the entire
Torino A.C.Torino Football Club, commonly referred to as simply Torino, is an Italian professional football club based in Turin, Piedmont, that was founded in 1906...
footballAssociation football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players using a spherical ball...
squad, popularly known as Il Grande Torino, crashed into the hill of
SupergaSuperga is a hill situated on the south bank of the Po River to the east of Turin in north-west Italy. At 672 metres above sea level, it is one of the most prominent of the hills which form an amphitheatre around the city....
near
TurinTurin is a major city as well as a business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River surrounded by the Alpine arch...
killing all 31 aboard including 18 players, club officials, journalists accompanying the team, and the plane's crew. The team was returning from a farewell match for Xico Ferreira against Benfica in
LisbonLisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the district of Lisbon and the main city of the Lisbon region...
.
Crash
The Avio Linee Italiane (
Italian Airlines)
Fiat G212CPThe Fiat G.212 was an Italian three-engine airliner of the 1940s. An enlarged development of Fiat's earlier G.12 transport, it was used in small numbers in commercial service and by the Aeronautica Militare.-Development and design:...
carrying the team flew into a thunderstorm on the approach to Turin and encountered conditions of low cloud and poor visibility. They were forced to descend to be able to fly visually. While descending for Turin the aircraft crashed against the base of the rear wall of the Basilica complex at the top of the hill of Superga.
Italian authorities cited low cloud, poor radio aids and an error in navigation as factors contributing to the accident.
The emotional impact the crash made on Italian sports fans was profound, as it claimed the lives of the players of a legendary team which had won the last
Serie ASerie A, called for sponsorship reasons as Serie A TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top echelon of the Italian football league system operating for eighty years from 1929. It is organized by Lega Calcio until 2010, but a new league like the English Premier...
title before the league play was interrupted in 1944 by
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and had then returned after the conflict to win four consecutive titles (1946–1949).
At the time of the crash Torino A.C. was leading Serie A with four games left to play in the season. The club carried on by fielding its youth team (Primavera) and in a sign of respect their opponents in each of these matches (Genoa, Palermo, Sampdoria, and Fiorentina) also fielded their youth sides. Primavera won each of their matches. The disaster seriously weakened the country's national side which had included up to 10 Torino players. Torino itself would not claim another title until 1976.
Of the entire squad only one player remained: Sauro Tomà missed the trip to Portugal due to injury. As well, the Hungarian star László Kubala, who was to give a guest performance in Lisbon, had just been re-united with his wife and son; the boy was ill and Kubala stayed back to help care for him, missing the fatal trip.
The son of captain
Valentino MazzolaValentino Mazzola was an Italian footballer and captain of the legendary Grande Torino side killed in the Superga air disaster...
,
SandroAlessandro Mazzola is an Italian former football player. He is the son of Valentino Mazzola, who was killed in the Superga air disaster in 1949, and one of the most renowned Italian football players of 1960s. He played for the Inter Milan team known as La Grande Inter. He was an inside right with...
, became a player of international fame in his own right in the 1960s playing with Inter Milan. Both father and son wore the number 10.
Victims
Players
- Valerio Bacigalupo
Valerio Bacigalupo was an Italian football goalkeeper from Vado Ligure, Savona. He started his career off with home province side Savona. After a brief spell at Genoa he moved to Torino where he won Serie A four times in a row....
- Aldo Ballarin
- Dino Ballarin
- Milo Bongiorni
- Eusebio Castigliano
Eusebio Castigliano was an Italian international footballer who played as a midfielder. Castigliano played professional club football for Pro Vercelli, Spezia, Biellese and Torino. Castigliano also earned seven caps for Italy between 1945 and 1949, scoring one goal. Castigliano died in the Superga...
- Rubens Fadini
- Guglielmo Gabetto
Guglielmo Gabetto was an Italian former soccer player. He played as a striker. Aside from goalkeeper Alfredo Bodoira he is the only player to win the Italian championship with both Torino FC and Juventus FC.-Biography:...
- Ruggero Grava
- Giuseppe Grezar
- Ezio Loik
- Virgilio Maroso
- Danilo Martelli
- Valentino Mazzola
Valentino Mazzola was an Italian footballer and captain of the legendary Grande Torino side killed in the Superga air disaster...
- Romeo Menti
Romeo Menti was an Italian football player.Born at Vicenza, Menti debuted in his city's Serie C club in 1935, in the same stadium that was to be dedicated to him a few years later...
- Piero Operto
- Franco Ossola
- Mario Rigamonti
- Julius Schubert
Club officials
- Arnaldo Agnisetta, manager
- Ippolito Civalleri, manager
- Egri Erbstein
Ernest Erbstein commonly known as Egri Erbstein was a Hungarian football player and later manager from Nagyvárad; now known as Oradea in Romania...
, trainer
- Leslie Lievesley
Leslie Lievesley was an English footballer. His regular position was at full back. He was born in Staveley, Derbyshire. He played for Manchester United, Doncaster Rovers and Chesterfield. He later became the coach of Torino F.C. and was one of 31 fatalities in the Superga air disaster that killed...
, coach
- Ottavio Corina, masseur
Journalists
- Renato Casalbore, (founder of Tuttosport
Tuttosport is an Italian sport newspaper published since 30 July 1945.Renato Casalbore founded the newspaper as a bi-weekly. In 1946 it moved to three editions a week, and since 12 March 1951 it has been published daily...
)
- Luigi Cavallero, (La Stampa
La Stampa is one of the best-known, most influential and most widely sold Italian daily newspapers. Published in Turin, it is distributed in Italy and other European nations. The current owner is the Fiat Group.- History :...
)
- Renato Tosatti, (Gazzetta del Popolo)
Crew
- Pierluigi Meroni, captain
- Antonio Pangrazi
- Celestino D'Inca
- Cesare Biancardi
Others
- Andrea Bonaiuti, organiser
See also
- Controlled flight into terrain
Controlled flight into terrain describes a collision whereby an airworthy aircraft, under pilot control, inadvertently flies into terrain, an obstacle, or water. The term was developed by engineers at Boeing in the late 1970s...
- The Munich air disaster
The Munich air disaster took place on 6 February 1958, when British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany. On board the plane was the Manchester United football team, nicknamed the "Busby...
killed several members of English sideAssociation football is a national sport in England.-Terminology:The sport is almost always referred to simply as "football". It is unusual for it to be called "soccer" and it is only referred to as "association football" in very limited circumstances...
Manchester UnitedManchester United Football Club is an English football club, one of the most popular football clubs in the world, based at Old Trafford in Greater Manchester. The club was a founding member of the Premier League in 1992, and has played in the top division of English football since 1938, with the...
in 1958.
- The entire 1961 United States figure skating team died in the crash of Sabena Flight 548
Sabena Flight 548, registration OO-SJB, was a Boeing 707 aircraft en route from New York International Airport to Brussels, Belgium's Zaventem Airport on February 15, 1961. The flight crashed during the approach for landing. All 72 on board were killed, as was one person on the ground...
on their way to the World Championships.
- The 1970 crash of Southern Airways Flight 932 killed nearly all of the Marshall University
Marshall University is a coeducational public research university in Huntington, West Virginia, founded in 1837 as a private subscription school by several residents of Guyandotte and the surrounding area, on the site once known as Maple Grove .On March 30, 1838, the institution was formally...
footballAmerican football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football, and often as Gridiron or Tackle football outside North America, is a competitive team sport known for combining strategy with physical play. The objective of the game is to score points by advancing the ball into the...
team, almost wiping out the university's footballThe Marshall Thundering Herd football team is an intercollegiate varsity sports program of Marshall University. The team represents the university as a member of the Conference USA Eastern division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, playing at the Division 1 Bowl Subdivision...
program.
- The 1987 crash of a Peruvian Navy Fokker F27
The 1987 Alianza Lima air disaster took place on December 8, 1987, when a Peruvian Navy Fokker F27-400M chartered by Peruvian football club Alianza Lima plunged into the Pacific Ocean six miles short of its destination, off the Ventanilla District of the city of Callao...
killed most of the Peruvian football club Alianza Lima's team.
- The 1989 crash of Surinam Airways Flight PY764
Surinam Airways Flight PY764 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands to Paramaribo-Zanderij International Airport in Suriname on a Surinam Airways DC-8...
killed a group of Surinamese players known as "The Colorful 11", whose members played professional football in the Netherlands.
- Nearly the entire Zambia national football team
The Zambia national football team represents the country of Zambia and is governed by the Football Association of Zambia. Before independence in 1964 they were known as the Northern Rhodesia national football team. The side is nicknamed Chipolopolo as copper is one of the south central African...
was killed in a 1993 crash.
External links