Close to tears, Busby Babe Albert Scanlon remembered the fateful day eight of his team-mates died and the Manchester United legend was born.

PAT HURST

Close to tears, Busby Babe Albert Scanlon remembered the fateful day eight of his team-mates died and the Manchester United legend was born.

The Munich air disaster on February 6, 1958, tore the heart out of Sir Matt Busby's young side, which was on the verge of greatness.

After leaving school at 15, Albert, a Manchester City fan, intended to become a plumber but was talent-spotted and started at Old Trafford.

While his father toiled at the local Dunlop's rubber factory for £2.50 a week his son was now a rising star, earning the princely sum of £11 a week.

Under Busby, by 1953 Albert had broken into the first team as a talented left winger and two years later Manchester United were champions. They won back-to-back titles in 1955 and 1956 - with a flowering side whose average age, like Albert, was just 22.

The side was also making strides in Europe, beating Red Star Belgrade 2-1 in the first leg of the European Cup quarter-final. They flew from Ringway for the second leg in Belgrade - many never returned alive.

Before the game on February 5, 1958, a photograph of the team line-up was taken. Albert was second left, part of the last snap of the Busby Babes. Ninety minutes later they were in the semi-final of the European Cup after a hard-fought 3-3 draw.

The club had chartered the plane from British European Airways and the team, officials and journalists were among the 43 on board. They stopped off on the way home at a wintry Munich airport to refuel.

At 3.04pm on February 6, 1958, flight BE609 began its third attempt to get off the ground - it was to become the day a team died and a legend was born. Albert was in an aisle seat half-way down the chartered Elizabethan Class Airspeed Ambassador.

Now 72 and living in sheltered accommodation in Salford, Albert remembered the fateful events. He said: "There was no panic, you couldn't see anything outside the windows, it was snowing and dark. We all went again and this time the plane kept going - apparently we hit a house."

The plane smashed through the airfield's perimeter fence, tearing off its wing and tail section, before it ploughed into a house and burst into flames.

Albert suffered a fractured skull, broken right leg, left arm and damaged kidneys. He remembers nothing about the crash. Albert regained consciousness two weeks later in a Munich hospital - unaware eight team-mates had died. "I woke up fighting somebody, a woman, a nun, in the operating theatre," he said. "I didn't know what had happened.

Among the 23 dead were internationals Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor and Duncan Edwards along with Geoff Bent, Eddie Colman, Mark Jones, David Pegg and Liam Whelan - a side cut down in its prime.

Albert spent eight weeks in hospital and was told by doctors he would never lace up a pair of football boots again. "I played every game the following season," he said with a smile.

Despite the crash, United went marching on - beating Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in an FA Cup clash just days later.

Busby recovered to rebuild a team and lead them to glory in the 1968 European Cup with two of his fellow survivors, Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes, among those who beat Benfica at Wembley.

The Munich air disaster created headlines around the globe and spawned a legend that, ultimately, helped make Manchester United one of the biggest clubs in the world.

Albert will be among the surviving players and families of the victims involved in tributes to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the crash with a special service at Old Trafford on February 10th.

Also there will be 75-year-old Ulsterman Harry Gregg, hailed a hero in the wake of the crash after returning to the wreckage to pull out survivors.

He cost Manchester United a record £23,000 when he joined from Doncaster Rovers - just two months before the disaster.

He said: "I want to remember the happy times, that's what I want the world to remember, that's what I want the families to remember."

What we see today has all its foundations back in those days'
FRANK MALLEY

WITH 12 league titles under his belt, Sir Alex Ferguson is by some distance the most successful manager in British football.

But when Manchester United mark the 50th anniversary of the Munich air crash on February 6, and play the official tribute match against Manchester City on February 10, it will be time to remember the man who made it all possible at Old Trafford.

"A special man," is how Ferguson describes Sir Matt Busby, the legendary United manager who fought for his life for two months in a Munich hospital after being dragged from the wreckage of British European Airways Flight 609. United were returning from a European Cup tie against Red Star Belgrade when 23 people, including eight of the Busby Babes, died in the crash.

"It took him a long time to get over it in terms of how he could face them again when he was lying in hospital knowing that he had lost all those young lads," explains Ferguson.

For a decade following the events, Busby was desperate to ensure that the Babes' legacy would be preserved.

Ferguson says: "What we see today has all its foundations back in those days. The saddest part is that all those young players had lost their lives before they even started to really enjoy their football.

"From there on, the romance has built, purely because of the way Matt rebuilt the team and won the European Cup in 1968.

"That created the romance we see today, the affection throughout the world, because we play the right way."