Bealine Charlie Oscar

On 12th October 1967, Cyprus Airways flight 284 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea near the island of Kastellorizo with the loss of all 66 passengers and crew. At the time it was the worst aviation disaster in Cypriot history. The flight, from London Heathrow to Nicosia via Athens, was operated by British European Airways on behalf of Cyprus Airways, using a Comet 4B aircraft, call sign Bealine Charlie Oscar. The subsequent accident investigation is still regarded as a masterpiece of forensic assessment, based on evidence from the very small amount of wreckage recovered. Within hours of the crash, there was much speculation that Charlie Oscar was destroyed in an attempt to assassinate General Georgios Grivas, the former leader of guerrilla forces during the Cyprus Emergency a few years earlier. After a short crime investigation, the police decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with an offence. The full police and UK Home Office files will not be made public until 2067. However, documents from the National Archives suggest the police investigation was influenced by the Foreign Office to avoid uncovering evidence of a political nature. For more than half a century, the families of the lost passengers and crew have been denied the crucial answers to their questions, and with them the justice and closure they still seek. In this, the third edition of Bealine Charlie Oscar, aviation professional and writer Simon Hepworth gives a comprehensive account of Charlie Oscar's last flight, the recovery operation and investigation into the tragedy. With access to new information, from previously undisclosed documents and witnesses, he pieces together what happened before, during and after the fateful flight. He presents compelling evidence that 66 innocent people were massacred in what is still Britain's biggest undetected mass murder, in a fall-out between people at the highest level of Cypriot politics, and that the authorities in the UK and Cyprus have continued to wish that the atrocity was quietly forgotten.