Tuesday 26 June 2007 was 'Amana Day' at the Airways Museum: the 57th anniversary of the crash of Australian National Airways' flagship, the Douglas DC-4 VH-ANA Amana. A gathering at the Airways Museum, Essendon Airport, Amana's final destination on that fateful day, remembered those who lost their lives in what remains Australia's equal worst civil air accident. Official guests travelled from as far afield as Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane for the day, and included members of the family of Captain R.J. 'Jim' Chapple, Amana's last Captain, as well as relatives of passengers who lost their lives in the crash.

Guests and visitors were treated to a brief illustrated history of ANA and Amana by renowned air safety author Mr Macarthur Job, plus a description of the accident whose cause is still officially a mystery to this day. This was followed by an illustrated talk by Mr Grahame Higgs, a former RAAF Air Traffic Controller and aviation historian, about some aspects of the accident which have only recently come to light following the discovery of 'new' pieces of wreckage some distance from the main accident site. At the conclusion of his talk, Mr Higgs presented the pieces of wreckage to the Airways Museum for permanent display and safekeeping.

Top: Mr Peter Chapple, son of Captain Chapple; Mr Grahame Higgs; Mr Macarthur Job OAM; and Mr Roger Meyer OAM, CAHS President.

< Read Grahame Higgs' story of the detective work behind finding and identifying the bits of Amana's wreckage, plus the new information thus deduced about Amana's final moments.

(Clicking on the icon at left downloads a 1.8 MB .pdf file Amana - One Small Piece of Jigsaw)

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