Busby Babes

There will be saturation coverage this week of a tragic anniversary. It will be 50 years on Wednesday since Flight 609 crashed on take-off from Munich Airport claiming 23 lives, including eight of the so-called Busby Babes and seven football writers.

That day planted indelible memories in those of a certain generation. It also represents a remarkable cultural phenomenon. The club's global popularity - and current commercial value - is built in part upon February 6, 1958.

In some respects this phoenix resembles the elevation to quasi-sainthood of US president John F Kennedy and Princess Diana, despite questionable moral virtues rendering them far less worthy of iconic status. Yet a semi-religious mythology has grown around all three, and chief executive David Gill has acknowledged the disaster is "one of the major reasons we are the club we are today".

The eight players represented the nucleus of what manager Sir Matt Busby later claimed would have matured into the greatest United team of all. He later confessed he felt responsible: "I wanted to die and thought of never going back to football." His wife, Jean, convinced him otherwise, saying: "The lads that died would want you to go on."

Those "lads" included Duncan Edwards, a strapping 21-year-old prodigy. Survivor Bobby Charlton, who later played for England in the 1966 World Cup final, said had he lived, Edwards might have captained that side. Charlton described him as: "the most gifted all-round player ever seen . . . he made me feel really inferior".

Thirteen days later United had to play a fifth round FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday. United listed no names on the team sheet - just 11 blanks. The first evidence of emerging cult status was that the visiting Wednesday supporters were almost universally alone in wanting their team to win.

Many fans with tickets failed to get in, but among those who did was a teenage Scot - Denis Law. He and a pal procured two half-crown tickets (twelve and a half pence) for £2. "It was a very emotional night for everybody,"

he recalled.

Just 12 years after World War II, anti-German sentiment still ran high, yet staff from the Rechts der Isar Hospital who had fought for the lives of the victims were welcomed to Old Trafford, and introduced on the pitch.

It was on the third attempt down the runway that United's plane had met disaster. It took 10 years to absolve the dead pilot of blame, but German authorities have never acknowledged the finding that slush was to blame.

Twenty years later, hints of an action replay provoked near-panic on a flight carrying journalists round South America on a pre-1978 World Cup tour. The Herald's much-missed correspondent, the late Ian Archer, recounted how it was attempting to take off in the thin Andean air.

Two attempts had been aborted when the plane reached insufficient runway speed. The pilot announced he'd have one more try. Passengers were agitated, but one unclipped his seatbelt, got up, and demanded to be allowed off. Fellow travellers attempted to get him back into his seat, until he pronounced: "The last time I went three times down a runway was with Manchester United, in Munich."

It was Frank Taylor, the only journalist to survive Munich.

The plane went suddenly quiet, and the pilot taxied back to the stand. Taylor's paper thought he had died in the 1958 accident, and ran his obituary, but he lived to the age of 81. Busby died in 1994, aged 84. Only five of the 1958 playing team remain alive.

Goalkeeper Harry Gregg rescued a 22-month old girl and her pregnant mother, Vera Lukic, from the wreckage as it threatened to explode. Charlton visited them in hospital and took a teddy bear to the little girl, Vesna. She still has it. Last year, Gregg travelled to Belgrade and for the first time met the two survivors and Zorna, the son born five months after that day.

A small shrine on a suburban housing estate marks the site of the accident. Among those who will go to Munich this week for a special service is Mike Jackson. He was 11 when his father, journalist Tom Jackson, died, and was not allowed to go to the funeral. Fifty years on, he hopes this week will finally bring closure.