Ireland’s TV3 news carried a breakthrough report on Aer Lingus Flight EI-712 in it’s 6 p.m. news on Wednesday, January 6^th 1999. The background to the report was a secret British memo, sourced under the American Freedom of Information Act, in which a Ministry of Defence official admitted that one of it’s missiles shot down the Aer Lingus plane. To cover up their mistake, the memo said, the British had cremated the bodies of the passengers recovered that showed no signs of impact. TV3 admitted however at the time that the documents were ‘totally un-authenticated’.

The following day, The Star newspaper published in Dublin had the front page splash

‘Revealed: British Burned Bodies in Secret’…the British authorities plucked victims from the Tuskar air crash out of the water -–and secretly cremated them without ever telling their families. The shocking truth has emerged from memos sent to the CIA by the British Department of Defence…’

The Irish Independent and Irish Times were among other newspapers that also carried details ‘of the relatives claim’. The Irish Times commenting that: ‘According to Mr Jerome McCormack of the Tuskar Tragedy Relatives Support Group, documents show that British authorities were anxious that only bodies showing signs of death due to impact with water should be returned to the Irish authorities. Just 14 bodies were recovered. The documents were uncovered in America by a private investigator hired by Ms Bonnie Ganglehoff, whose parents died in the crash…according to Mr. McCormack, the documents show that HMS Penelope was conducting missile tests with the new SeaDart missile and one of the missiles hit the Aer Lingus Viscount. The report said the plane’s transponder – which returns radar signals to ground stations – filed and the plane did not register on British radar screens.’

Mr McCormack did however add that the group was anxious to hear from anyone who could confirm or deny the reports authenticity, and he promised they would continue campaigning until the full truth of what happened is known.

Prior to publication, the British Embassy in Dublin reiterated that it believes there is no new evidence about the crash and ‘no reason whatsoever for a new investigation’

Background to the Documents:

1968-1981

The only Americans aboard Flight EI-712 on morning of March 24^th 1968 were Joseph and Mary Gangelhoff. Their bodies were never recovered. In the mid-seventies, following the inconclusive official inquiry into the disaster, their daughter Bonnie and her two brothers decided to make some checks of their own. Their lawyers hired Tim Hooper, a private investigator from Springfield, Massachusetts and within weeks he was getting results. He found a memo from Archie H Thom of the Ministry of Defence headed ‘Restricted – priority one. Limited Access’. The six point bulletin said that the Aer Lingus aircraft’s transponding device failed to function, causing a Sea Dart surface-to-air missile to be launched which hit the plane. British ships ‘immediately controlled’ the wreckage and it was decided to hush up the incident.

According to the documents, the Ministry of Defence allegedly decided that the cause of death of all the passengers and crew should be ‘impact upon the water’ and to ensure this ‘all passengers not showing signs of impact have been destroyed by means of cremation.’

The document seemed to explain everything – the aircraft was downed by a British missile and the 47 missing bodies were never recovered as the British had burnt them.

According to the Sunday Times investigation ( published 10 January 1999 ), Hooper was paid handsomely for his work with the Gangelhoff’s children using their father’s insurance policy to fund the investigation. He received some $12,000 ‘ a considerable sum in 1977’.

Over a 12 month period, Hooper produced some dozen cables from a military attaché in the American Embassy in London to the British desk of the State Department in Washington. Each built on the theory of a missile downing the aircraft, followed by a cremation. When the newspaper contacted Bonnie Ganglehoff before publication, she said that Hooper had ‘never said exactly where he got the documents. He mentioned some source he had in the State Department which he could not reveal. He certainly did not say he got them under the Freedom of Information Act. I tried to get them under the act and I got nowhere. ‘

Then Hooper suddenly disappeared. The Gangelhoff’s lawyers went looking for him only to be told that he was in a witness protection programme, turning up as a witness in a Connecticut arson case. Then the trail went dead. Suspicion then began to fall on the documents, as Victor Ferrante, one of the Gangelhoff’s attorneys said ‘I think he concocted them. He was one of those people who was no use, because even when he was telling the truth, you didn’t know. As for Bonnie herself? ‘I still don’t know the truth’ she said ‘It could be a total hoax’.

The main clue that something is amiss according to the Sunday Times, is in the first line of Hooper’s document, the classification ‘restricted’. Classifications were stamped at the time, not typed. Restricted is the lowest category, denoting that documents go to certain people only and would cause mild embarrassment if made public. Next up the scale is confidential, then secret. Top of the range is top secret, information of vital importance to the national interest. The article’s author, John Burns places the fact that admissions the British authorities secretly cremated bodies to cover up the shooting down of a civilian aircraft would easily fall into this category. There are also many other anomalies. Among many, are miss-spellings. A British ship referred to as HM Penelope rather than HMS Penelope.

In 1981, Bonnie Ganglehoff gave the Hooper documents to Gerry McCabe, the St. Phelim accident investigator who worked in the Department of Transport in Dublin. The Irish Government in turn consulted the British Ministry of Defence who dismissed the documents as fraudulent. The consensus within the Department of Transport in Dublin was the documents were also suspect. Nobody told Ganglehoff.

1998

Around September 1998, Bonnie Ganglehof sent copies of the Hooper documents to the Chairman of the Tuskar Tragedy Relatives Support Group, Jerome McCormick. Like most of the relatives of the victims, McCormick is anxious for more answers about the crash and feels that both the Irish and British Governments have not been forthcoming enough. So he decided to rattle some cages.