This was the JU-52 on the mountain the day after the crash, note that all 3 engines had been ripped from their mountings, which fortunately prevented any fire breaking out.

Photo: Irish Times.

Junkers Ju-52/3m specs
First flight:1930
Propulsion: 3 piston engines
Max. of passengers: 17

Fighting to control their aircraft in a raging storm,the crew of a JU-52 of the French Air Force were forced to make a crash landing on a lonely mountain top nr Enniskerry on the eastern fringes of Ireland.

The JU-52 worker number 1429, and coded B-46 had taken off from Le Bourget airport shortly before 9.am on Monday 12th August 1946.The 4 crew & the plane had been charted to fly 23 French Girl Guides to Ireland for a camping holiday,and though weather conditions were good when the aircraft took off, they were to rapidly deteriorate along the way, in fact on entering the North Atlantic soon after crossing the Channel, storms were building up around Eire,with lashing rain and 50 mph winds, houses had been flooded and yachts torn from their moorings in the bays.

The aircraft and its 27 occupants should have arrived at the airfield of Collinstown, nr Dublin at noon, but due to the hostile elements had got lost in cloud and unbeknown to the airport, the JU-52 had crash-landed at 1,800ft at a little after 1.30pm, Though some of the passengers and crew were injured, all had somehow managed to survive, and the aircraft was more or less intact allowing at least some shelter from the storm.

Whilst the pilot and one of the girls set off in one direction to find help, another girl Chantel de Vitay made her way down another way and eventually raised the alarm at the Mount Maulin.

Hotel,five miles from Enniskerry, and a contingment of Civic Guard and local fire brigade made their way to the scene to get the others down.
All were eventually rescued, and although some received very bad injuries which left scars for life, all survived.

Pilot: Capt. Christian Habez.
2/Pilot: Georges Beagioni.
Navigator: Michel Jourret.
Radio: Daniel Durran.

Left: Navigator Michel Jaurret is offered a cigarette by Captain Christian Habez the pilot, both men are seen here in St.Micheals hospital,Dun Laoghaire,recovering from their accident in the Wicklow Mountains.

An Oige News

In August 1946 a plane bringing 23 French girl guides to Dublin crashed into the side of Djouce Mountain in Wicklow. Air traffic control thought that the plane had turned back and were unaware that it had crashed. Remarkably two guide leaders left the wreck in pitch darkness and made their way to a house near Enniskerry. Twelve hours later rescuers discovered the wreckage and there were no fatalities. Les Guides de France are keen to hear from anyone who may have visited the French Guides in hospital. Please contact the Commissioner, Irish girl guides. phone +353-1-6683898. (from An Oige News)

Accident description
Date:12 AUG 1946
Time:ca 13:30
Type:Junkers Ju-52/3m2e
Operator:L'Armée de L'Air
Registration:B-46
Msn / C/n:1429
Crew:0 fatalities / 4 on board
Passengers:0 fatalities / 23 on board
Total:0 fatalities / 27 on board
Airplane damage:Written off
Location:near Enniskerry (Ireland)
Phase:En route
Nature:Int'l Non Scheduled Passenger
Departure airport:Paris-Le Bourget Airport (LBG)
Destination airport:Collinstown
Narrative:
The Ju-52 had taken off from Le Bourget shortly before 9 am. The plane had been charted to fly 23 French Girl Guides to Ireland for a camping holiday. Although weather conditions were good when the aircraft took off, they rapidly deteriorated along the way. Near the village of Roundwood, the disoriented captain initiated a climb to a safe altitude. The climb angle was identical to the rising angle of the mountain slope, and the aircraft mushed into the undergrowth and slid to a safe stop on Djouce Mountain.
Source: (also check out sources used for every accident)
Capt. Mike Reynolds

MIRACLE ESCAPE

(North Wicklow Times, page 8 Friday, August 5, 1993)

 It was exactly 47 years ago this month that a passenger plane carrying a group of French Girl Guides on a visit to Ireland crashed on a North Wicklow mountainside. Aviation historian Michael O’Reilly recalls the story of the crash and the subsequent rescue operation, and the fact that, miraculously, no one was killed.

At 9 a.m. on Monday, August 12th, 1946, a French Army Transport Command Junkers 52/3M climbed away from Le Bourget Airport near Paris; intended destination Collinstown Airport near Dublin. It was a plane, which had flown to this country before, having recently delivered fresh strawberries to the Dublin fruit market.

On this occasion, the Junkers carried a human cargo, however, consisting of 21 girl guides aged from 13 to 22 who had been invited by their Irish counterparts to attend a holiday camp at St. Columba's, Rathfarnham, Dublin.

The Captain of the five-strong crew was 29 year old Christian Habez, a veteran pilot who had served in both the French Air Force and RAF Bomber Command during the war. The plane he flew was one that had been built in his country during the years of wartime occupation by the Germans.

Although the weather had been good during the early part of the flight, it soon changed for the worse with heavy winds and rain closing in on the aircraft over the Irish Sea, bringing the plane's ceiling down to 300 feet in places and reducing visibility to less than three miles,

Approaching 2 p.m., the aircraft was flying at 2,000 feet over the North Wicklow coastline at normal cruising speed. A short time later,

Captain Habez was surprised to see a set of iron railings and a waterfall come into view through the clouds, revealing they were over land rather than the sea as they sill thought.

Opting to descend to get a better bearing on his position, it was not long before dramatic and startling events occurred. Peering through the mist and rain, Captain Habez was suddenly confronted with a black mass of mountain looming ahead.

Trying to avert a tragedy, the Captain opted to 'pancake' his plane onto the mountain, instinctively pulling back the control column to gain as much height and time as possible. Soon after, following the contours of the mountainside, the Junkers made a bone jarring crash Sanding.

The undercarriage crumpled as the plane ploughed across the moorlands, spewing debris including three engines in its wake before finally shuddering to a halt.

Captain Habez was cut, bruised and dazed by the impact, but remained conscious and was immediately concerned for his passengers. Looking behind him, he saw that nine girls thrown out of the plane were still alive but obviously injured, while more lay injured inside the wreckage. His crewmates were also cut and bruised, but still in reasonable shape.

All had survived, but it was obvious that immediate medical assistance was urgently needed.

The plane had come down at a spot overlooking Lough Tay on a 1,500 feet high shoulder of Djouce Mountain. Making the girls as comfortable as possible within the. wrecked plane, Captain Habez set. off with a senior guide to find help. Following a stream for over two hours, they eventually arrived at 5 p.m. at the home of G. Davis at Deerpark House. From there, the emergency services were alerted.

An hour later another crash survivor, Mile. Chantel deVitry, along with two of the guides made it to the Maudlin Hotel south of Enniskerry where she informed a French speaking Austrian visitor, Miss Frances Widmann, what had happened. As a result, the first rescuers to set out from there were the hotel owners sons Conor and Brian Hogan and Dr. William Deeley M.D. of Enniskerry.

Later that evening, yet another two crew members arrived at the home of Lord Oranmore and Brown at Luggala who personally organised a rescue mission across the hills.

As news of the emergency spread, ambulances from the Army, Dun Laoghaire Fire Brigade and the St. John's Ambulance Brigade all sped to the Djouce Mountain area, waiting for further details of the exact crash location.

A military search party led by Major-General Hugo McNeill trekked across the moors while Garda from Roundwood headed by Sgt. MacNally motored to the scene, as did Rev. Eugene Doherty O.M.I, and Rev. Michael Kehane O.M.I, of St. Kevin's Glencree.

However, it was not until 9 p.m. that Captain Habez along with Conor Hogan and the help of an ordnance survey map located the aircraft. More rescuers and medical personnel arrived, but it was to take from 10.30 that night until 5 the following morning before all of the passengers and crew were brought down the mountainside to the waiting ambulances below.

During that long operation, the Chief Engineer at the Roundwood Reservoir Michael Fitzsimons gallantly hiked to the crash site to give the girls their first meal since the previous 'morning.

As darkness fell, the crash scene became even more harrowing, with flares being fired to indicate the site and rescuers having to carry injured youngsters up to five miles across mountain moorland in the face of lashing winds and rain, and treacherous mud and bogholes underfoot.

One ambulance had to drive through a three feet deep river at the Sallygap as flood waters had washed the bridge away.

By 6 a.m. Tuesday, all of the piano's complement was finally accounted for, with the injured recovering at St. Michael's Hospital, Dun Laoghaire, Bricin Military Hospital in Dublin, and the Wicklow County Hospital. Although some passengers were severely injured, all of them eventually made a full recovery and returned home to France for convalescence after a few weeks.

Subsequent investigations by a French Air Force inquiry team later revealed that the outcome of the crash could have been far more serious when it emerged that 240 gallons of aviation fuel which might have ignited remained on board.

I myself have visited the site on a number of occasions over the years, most recently in April of this year when I rediscovered a nine foot section of wing from the wreckage which I first uncovered in 1981. A picture of it is reproduced here.

An Irishman’s Diary, 1998

IT DOES not often happen that when a plane crashes into a mountain, everybody in the aircraft survives the ordeal. It happens even less often that more than half the survivors of such an accident would want, 52 years later, to re-visit the site of the crash and to say thank you to those who rescued them and cared for them in hospital.

Yet this is exactly what has been happening this weekend and the story is worth telling in some detail.

On August 12th, 1946, a plane carrying a party of French Girl Guides to an international Guide camp in Co Dublin crashed in bad weather on Djouce Mountain in Co Wicklow.

At Collinstown Airport, as Dublin Airport was then known, the plane's non-arrival around midday does not appear to have caused undue anxiety. It seems to have been assumed that the aircraft had simply turned back because of stormy weather conditions that morning.

The Crashed Plane on Djouce mountain. Photograph: Dermot James

The news that the plane had crashed did not become known until one of the French Guide leaders, who had no idea where she was, reached a house in the Glencree valley that evening.

She had stumbled for more than six hours in torrential rain across the mist-covered Wick-low mountainside, narrowly missing the cliffs at Powerscourt Waterfall.

A rescue party of three set out from that house in atrocious conditions to try, with only the sketchiest of details, to find the site of the crash.

Meanwhile, a second Guide leader, along with the pilot of the plane, who had set out for help in the opposite direction, found their way to Luggala Lodge, the secluded home of Lord Oranmore and Browne beside Lough Tay. They were taken to St Michael's Hospital, Dun Laoghaire, from where ambulances were dispatched even though no one at this time knew the location of the crash.

Wreckage found

It was midnight, almost 12 hours after the crash, before the |wrecked aeroplane was discovered in a swirling mist on a gale-swept ridge at an altitude of 1,800 feet.

The Guides, aged between 13 and 17, eight of whom were seriously injured, were huddled together in the fuselage with one remaining leader and two members of the crew. By then further ambulances had been dispatched from Dublin and Wicklow to Boleyhorrigan Bridge, near Luggala, the nearest road to the crash, where an old house known as Sheepbank Cottage became a casualty station manned by Garda, Civil Defence, the Red Cross and the St John Ambu­lance Brigade.

After 19 people were brought down with great difficulty, it was realised the plane's navigator was missing. A search party returned to the scene and found him some distance from the wreckage.

However, it was only after the casualties were taken to St Michael's and St Bricin's Hospitals that it was discovered one of the Guides was also missing and, after a second night on the mountain, she was eventually found by a party of Red Cross workers from Bray some distance from the plane, injured, disorientated, exhausted and suffering from exposure.

How the aircraft came to be flying so low in a mountainous area continues to be something of a mystery. The flight, which had left Paris at 9 o'clock that morning, was uneventful until the plane approached the Irish coast, where weather conditions suddenly deteriorated as it flew into a severe storm, which had been causing disruption since early morning throughout eastern Ireland, damaging houses and, flooding roads. Several bridges had been swept away.

Nil visibility

The plane appears to have crossed the Wicklow coast in nil visibility, flying in a north-westerly direction at an altitude of around 1,800 feet into an area where half-a-dozen or more summits were over 2,000 feet, including Djouce, which rises to almost 2,400 feet.

The plane struck the mountain's southern ridge with a glancing blow which tore off the undercarriage and the engines, which may have absorbed most of the impact. It then rebounded into the air before hitting the ground for a second time, and slid for some distance down the far side of the ridge.

Had the plane been flying 20 or 30 feet lower, the crash would almost certainly have resulted in the deaths of most, if not all, concerned, but fortunately the fuselage remained virtually intact and there was no fire.

The aircraft was a Junkers JU 52, a converted German wartime troop carrier, and the fact that the passengers were all seated sideways, facing one another on long benches rather than in conventional seats, meant they were thrown down the length of the plane on impact.

Despite their ordeal and injuries, eight of the girls were discharged within 48 hours, and all the Guides, as well as the crew of the plane, subsequently made good recoveries.

The site of the crash was preserved by Garda for several days while the wreckage was inspected by officials from the aviation section of the Department of Industry and Commerce and the French Air Force.

After vital components were removed, the remainder of the wreckage was recycled by local farmers, and smaller pieces were picked up by hill-walking souvenir hunters. Within a few years nothing remained to mark the scene.

As a result of this, and several similar crashes, a new Ground Proximity Warning System, which gives an audible warning in the cockpit if the aircraft comes within a pre-set height of closing terrain, became mandatory on public transport aircraft.

Survivors return

Last Saturday, fifty-two years later, 14 survivors arrived back in Ireland to re-visit the scene of the crash, to visit the two hospitals, and to meet again, some of those involved in their rescue and subsequent recovery.

A committee of women, who had been members of the Irish Girl Guides at the time of the crash, arranged a weekend pro­gramme of events, visits and reunions. They sought out per­sonnel who had helped in the rescue operations as well as some of the medical staff on duty at the time.

Leading the French party is Ms Chantal Lacoin who, as a 21-year-old guide leader, had also been in charge of the French Guides in 1946. It was she who, though injured, man­aged to reach the house in Glencree to alert the rescuers to the accident.

After the weekend pro­gramme of events in Dublin and Wicklow, the visitors are to spend a week touring the west of Ireland before returning to France.

DERMOT JAMES

THE WRECKED AIR-LINER, IN WHICH TWENTY-THREE FRENCH GIRL GUIDES WERE TRAVELLING, ON THE SPOT WHERE IT CRASHED IN THE WICKLOW MOUNTAINS NEAR DUBLIN

On August 12 an air-liner crashed in the Wicklow Mountains, near Dublin. On board were twenty-three French Girl Guides making a "friendship visit" to Dublin, where arrangements had been made for their reception by Dublin Guides. after lying in heavy rain fro several hours they were rescued. most of them injured and suffering from shock. Our photograph shows the machine on the spot where it crashed, with one engine detached and lying on the left of the aircraft.