Padiham Cemetery's memorial revamp for East Lancashire's Dan-Air disaster victims (From Lancashire Telegraph)
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Padiham Cemetery's memorial revamp for East Lancashire's Dan-Air disaster victims
1:37pm Thursday 19th January 2012 in Looking Back
MEMORIAL The wreckage of the Dan-Air flight which crashed in 1970 killing everyone on board
A MEMORIAL to 45 air-crash victims from East Lancashire has been revamped thanks to a town mayor.
Lettering on the Padiham Cemetery monument to those who perished in the 1970 Dan-Air disaster had become indistinct.
And relatives of those killed in the incident, which saw a jet crash into a mountain range near Barcelona, were keen to see the area overhauled.
Now town mayor Coun Bob Clark has stepped in and arranged for a stonemason to retouch the inscription to the ill-fated passengers.
Parks department staff have also revamped the small garden, where the memorial stands, in the Blackburn Road cemetery.
All 112 people on board the plane were killed, including four players from the all-conquering Britannia Wanderers football team, based at the Guy Street pub of the same name.
The victims also included holidaymakers from Burnley, Nelson, Barnoldswick, Worsthorne and Ramsbottom, which had set off from Manchester Airport.
Coun Clark said: “The families are happy with the work which was been carried out and I was glad I was able to assist.”
Last year family and friends of the victims staged a memorial service to mark the 40th anniversary of the crash.
The memorial was unveiled following a fundraising campaign by the former Padiham Urban District Council, under the chairmanship of Sheila Maw.
An official report into the disaster concluded that the jet had been talked down to disaster after misleading information from the cock-pit and the mistaken identity of a mystery blip on the radar screen.
