Nine Who Died In Dakota Crash In Gua Musang Buried

KUALA LUMPUR, March 15 (Bernama) -- Nine of the 12 people aboard a British cargo aircraft which crashed in Gua Musang, Kelantan 62 years ago were buried with full military honours at the Commonwealth Memorial in Cheras, Thursday. The burial ceremony was conducted by officers and personnel from 502 Squadron of the British Royal Air Force to remember their sacrifices when they served in the then Malaya. Also present were British High Commissioner Simon Featherstone, families of the victims of the crash and those involved in the effort to retrieve the bones from the crash site. The ceremony was concluded by a rendition of the 'The Last Post' on a trumpet by a Gurkha soldier who was also brought in from the United Kingdom. The nine were pilot Air Force Lieutenant Edward Robert Taibot, navigation officer Sergeant Geoffrey Clearance Carpenter, signals officer Sergeant Thomas O'Toole, all of whom were from the 502 Squadron. F. Bryant, P. Taylor, A. Wilson and M. Goldsmith from the British Army Corps and an officer from the Second Malay Batallion Secondment Regiment, Major JH Proctor. Another crash victim, Mohamed Abdul Jalil, from the police force, was buried on April 2008. According to chief researcher of Time Travel Expedition, Kapten Muhammad Zuraiman Abd Ghani, the ill-fated C47 Dakota aircraft carried 12 people including three crew members from Squadron 502 on a flight from Kota Baharu, Kelantan to Changi, Singapore. The aircraft crashed in the jungles of Gua Musang, due to engine trouble, killing all aboard. Their bodies were found and buried near the site by a rescue team who could not take them out because of communist threat. "The investigation on the crash was reopened at the request of a younger brother of one of the victims Sergeant Geoffrey Clearence Carpenter to the British Ministry of Defence," he told Bernama at the British High Commission here, Thursday. Zuraiman and the Time Travel Expedition team found the wreck of the aircraft and recovered the bones of the victims in November 2008. -- BERNAMA