Tragedy at Tuskar Rock

An Irish government report was published two years after the disaster. It speculated on possible causes for the crash but produced no definitive conclusions. A blizzard of rumour surrounded the incident for many years, of which the most popular was that the plane had been blown out of the sky during a British military training exercise and that the whole thing had subsequently been hushed up to spare the blushes of the London government. More than thirty years after the crash, the Irish government delegated a new study to three independent experts, two French and one Australian. Mike Reynolds was their Irish-based assistant, gathering information, interviewing surviving witnesses and performing other relevant tasks. He made a crucial contribution which suggested that the initial upset to the aircraft had occurred much earlier in the flight than had always been assumed. The final report concluded that all of the evidence is consistent with some initial damage to the left tailplane, shortly after takeoff from Cork. No other aircraft or missile was involved. "Tragedy at Tuskar Rock" is based on Mike Reynolds' work on the report. It is a detective tale of how the clues were assembled and how the mystery was unravelled. It also reveals a dramatic twist in the story. Everything was not as it seemed. The real story of the crash, presented here for the first time in book form, is far more interesting than the conspiracy theories - and just as sensational.