Miss Josephine Butler, 23 was an air hostess (air stewardess) onboard the B.O.A.C. Constellation which crashed at Kallang Airport on 13 March 1954. She has been flying for about 18 months before this tragic incident took place. Miss Butler was pulled clear of the plane and rushed to the hospital where she died the following morning. Her fiancé, Engineer Officer R.G. Carter was one of the survivors of the ill-fated plane. The person who took the award winning of the rescue attempt of Josephine Butler from the blazing aircraft was
Sam Kai Faye. Prior to flying, Josephine Butler made plans to wed her fiancé and settle down and never to fly again. She is the daughter of Mr. G. S. Butler, headmaster of a preparatory school at Torquay in South Devon, England.
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| Josephine Butler (Kallang air crash victim) |
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| Tomb of Miss Josephine Butler at Bidadari (source: NLB) |
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| Mass funeral for the Kallang crash victims 1954 |
I am very fortunate to able to see how this row of graves looks like in Bidadari just before they were exhumed to make way for development. (This was made possible from the photo contributions [
1 &
2] of Liesel Strauss to NLB)
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| Kallang air crash victims graves (source: NLB) |
The Constellation Crash - First Air Crash in Kallang Airport
A British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) Lockheed L-749A Constellation carrying 40 crashed and caught fire as it attempted to land at Singapore-Kallang Airport on 13 March 1954 at 3:04 pm resulting in 33 fatalities (all 31 of its passengers died and 2 out of 9 of its crew members were killed). Details of how the airplane crashed and flipped over and the rescue attempts that took place and finally the public enquiry and investigation that took place can be found online at various sources, [Infopedia, Wikipedia], so i will not repeat them.
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Headlines [source: NewspaperSG]
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