Wake Up, It's A Crash - The Survivors' Stories - Softcover

Moorhouse, Earl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0956907369 ISBN 13: 9780956907363

Publisher: Bilbury Lane, 2015

Synopsis

What does it feel like to know that the aircraft you are flying in is crashing - that in seconds your life may be over? What are the thoughts that flash through your mind? How do you react?  These are the questions author and journalist Earl Moorhouse put to fellow survivors when he began researching this compelling and deeply moving account of the world's first Boeing 747 jumbo jet disaster at Nairobi, East Africa in November 1974. He, his wife Lynn and their two young children were among the survivors.   The buildup of tension is relentless - Lufthansa's Boeing 747 Hessen lifting into the night sky over Germany, crossing the Mediterranean and the African deserts in the dark; some passengers watching a Clint Eastwood movie, others sipping cocktails in the upstairs lounge. As morning breaks, the 747 lands smoothly in Nairobi for a brief refuelling stop and a change of crew on the way to Johannesburg. And then, with 157 aboard, a take-off run. The wheels lift, the aircraft rises 100 feet and plunges back to earth, breaking in two against an embanked road. It ploughs on, bursting into flames. It comes to a halt in the muddy bush, and the survivors begin a desperate fight to escape the inferno. Some seemingly "ordinary" people become heroes. And ninety-eight make it out.   This is their story.

About this title

About the Author

Born in London, Earl Moorhouse was taken to South Africa by his parents at an early age. After a colourful childhood spent in a small town on the Natal South Coast, he lived in Pretoria, where he began working as a newspaper reporter during the apartheid years.  His journalistic career took him to Europe and Australia and back to England, where he served as editor of the Somerset Guardian, Somerset Standard and Wells Journal newspapers. He has worked also as an advertising copywriter, magazine publisher and media consultant. He lives with his writer-photographer wife Lynn in the spa city of Bath, in Somerset, England. He is also the author of The Last Summer In Little England, an autobiographical novel, based on his experiences as a young English boy living in an "English" seaside town in South Africa in the 1950s. This book is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle ebook editions.   Contact details: earl@bilburylane.co.uk www.squiresyard.co.uk

Edition details

• Publisher: Bilbury Lane
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0956907369
• ISBN 13: 9780956907363
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 274