The Saptha Kanya plane crash, a failure in the sky

By Amal Hewavissenti

The deadly plane crash on the Saptha Kanya range (Anjimale or the Seven Virgin Hills) in Maskeliya - Nuwara Eliya on December 4, 1974 has presented mysteries hitherto unresolved. The air crash generates a complete enigma as to what caused Dutch Pilot Hendrik Lamme to fly the plane at a lower height of two-thousand feet when the top of the Saptha Kanya range was at about four thousand and three hundred feet!

The fiery explosion of the plane against one of the mountain tops of the range at night (10.15 to be precise) created immediate terror among the villagers because this is the area where the hydro electricity power plants of Lakshapana and Polpitiya and the tunnels supplying water to them are situated. The thunderous roar of the explosion was at first confused by the panic-stricken people to be an explosion of a power plant or a rapid gush of water from damaged reservoirs of Castlereigh and Maussakele.

To reproduce an account given by an eyewitness to the dark night's catastrophe on the mountain top, a few sparks, followed by a roaring sound, flew across the sky until they gradually grew bigger and exploded against the dark outline of Anjimale mountain.

For the most part of the day, the tops of seven virgin hills (Saptha Kanya or Anjimale) remain blanketed by a thick ring of fog and the pilot must have flown his plane on to the invisible tops of the mountain range.

According to the reports of investigation by Dutch officials, the plane's wing going some two-thousand feet up in the air had brushed hard against one of the mountains and the plane had crashed onto the top of the next mountain.

During this period in 1974, people had little access to communication equipment such as television or telephone and a few possessed a radio, the most technologically advanced apparatus to broadcast information. The whole area of Maskeliya lay covered in pitch darkness because there was no electricity and people had gone to bed early (in the absence of the TV of course!)

This is the first recorded plane crash in Sri Lankan history which immediately compelled the crew of 191 to sign their death warrant. The first information about the crash was despatched to Colombo after much labour by the telephone operator of the Hatton Post Office. As there was limited communication equipment, only a few people knew about the plane crash and the whole country remained in total ignorance of it until the second day of the accident.

Martin Air and the crew

The plane Martin Air was carrying 191 passengers when it reached Maskeliya at 10.15 pm, a few minutes prior to the deadly crash on the mountains. The plane which had taken off from Indonesia was scheduled to stop at Katunayake airport on its flight to Jeddah airport in Saudi Arabia.

The passengers were possibly businessmen and pilgrims bound for Mecca. It is surprising that the plane was being flown by a highly experienced pilot and an assistant pilot and the control room of Katunayake Airport had provided all instructions once the plane had entered Sri Lankan sky.

The pilot Hendrik Lamme was a Dutch who was highly trained in aviation and had been trained for 26,770 hours in the air. He had flown Mcdonald Douglas DC8 planes successfully for about 4,000 hours and was assisted by experienced airman Robert Blomsma.

"Anjimale" means five mountain tops which are identical to each on the range. The range of mountains extends to north and the eastern slope belongs to Nuwara Eliya district while the western slope is on Kegalle district.

Enigmatic

However, the Sinhala and Tamil people on the estates of Maskeliya were fairly confused by the news that a plane had crashed on the Anjimale mountains as broadcast at bazaars.

They had to be content with the limited information broadcast over the radio owing to the very fact that no communication method such as TV, telephones, radio services or newspapers were available at the time.

But the most they could discover of the plane crash was the blazing fire on Sapthakanya mountain which is on the Maskeliya - Avissawella main road.

The most baffling riddle about the plane crash is that Hendrik Lamme had suddenly lowered the plane to 2,000 feet - a point far below the height of 35,000 feet at which he had been flying. Some reports of investigations assertively expressed that Hendrik Lamme might have misjudged the lamps of Lakshapana power plant to be those of Katunayake Airport and lowered the plane to such a staggering level. But the officials from Martin Air company and Mcdonald Douglas company maintained, after a thorough probe on the site that the plane was completely free from any technical defect and the pilot (Hendrik Lamme) was adequately experienced to distinguish the airport from the power plant at Maskeliya.

It was utterly impossible to launch operations to rescue the casualties because most of the passengers dead and injured had fallen into a deep trench at the base of the mountains and remained trapped in it. Most unfortunately, the security forces lamentably lacked necessary equipment and trained soldiers to arrive at the scene and rescue injured people at the time of the accident. The soldiers found it extremely difficult to reach the precipitous slopes where the wreckage of the plane and dead bodies had fallen.

Even-though the Air Control Unit of the Katunayake airport was not equipped with a powerful radar system by then, the pilot was well guided with the route and the height at which the plane should have been flown. However, it is safer to conclude that the pilot has inadvertently lowered the plane in darkness and has paid less heed to the bleak mountains that loomed out of the blackness and towered around the plane.

A horrifying sight

Even the media men were forced to confront severe difficulties and challenges in their attempt to track down the wreckage on the perilous slopes and the jungle.

M.G. Nandasena, a villager in Upper Maliboda, recollects his perilous journey to the wreckage of the plane in the jungle at the base of Saptha Kanya hills.

"I heard about this catastrophe over the radio kept in the bazaar. The following morning I left for Anjimale together with a teacher and a friend of mine. As we reached the jungle area, we saw soldiers, police officers and people. As we clambered up the hill holding on to trees and roots, we had the stench of burnt oil and saw that a part of the mountain burnt. As we clambered further up the mountain we were horrified to see headless dead bodies, limbs, clothes, parts of boxes and toys on the branches and tree tops..."

"Our idea was to get to the top of the mountain but it soon proved a dangerous task. Half way on the mountain, we looked down through the trees. We saw people and police officers carrying dead bodies.

We saw a helicopter and foreign officials coming out of it... Finally we saw the parts of the plane specially the windows blackened resting on a rock below..."Later, a tyre of the ill-fated "Martin Air" was found near the Post office of Norton Bridge and is now kept on display at a filling station at Norton Bridge. A special structure memorial to all those who died in the plane crash has been erected on Saptha Kanya range.