'I remember the loud sound': 93-year-old recalls catastrophic Rabat air crash

Jessie Farrugia was just 13 years old, sitting by a window in her Rabat home, when an ordinary afternoon turned into one of Malta’s darkest post-war tragedies.

“I was upstairs sewing,” she recalls, now aged 93. “I remember thinking how loud the aeroplane sounded.”

Moments later, it came crashing down.

On April 5, 1946, a Royal Air Force training exercise ended in catastrophe when a Vickers Wellington bomber plunged into St Publius Street, just around the corner from Farrugia’s home. The disaster claimed 20 lives - four crew members and 16 Rabat residents - marking the first major local air tragedy of the post-war period.

Eighty years on, Farrugia remains one of the last living witnesses to the crash. On Saturday, she joined a small group commemorating the anniversary.

That afternoon remains etched in vivid detail.

Her father had just returned from the dockyards. Her mother, seven months pregnant, was in the kitchen. Farrugia was upstairs, needle in hand, distracted by the unusual roar overhead.

“I tried to go outside. But I stopped between the doors the moment it crashed.”

The impact was deafening and a dark cloud rose into the sky.

Her mother yelled out: “Don’t go out! Don’t go out!”

Farrugia recalls: “I heard a man shouting, ‘There is a small baby here!’” as neighbours rushed into the streets.

Men who moments earlier had been drinking coffee ran toward the wreckage, scrambling to pull survivors from beneath collapsed homes.

Among those killed were police constable Pietru Mifsud and his 25-year-old wife Marija.

In another home, Sunta Galea was found shielding her two daughters - three-year-old Marija and baby Maddalena, just three months old - in their beds. None survived.

The memorial plaque in Rabat of the 5 April 1946 aviation crash. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Farrugia also remembers the devastating fate of the Bugeja family.

“The daughter, Marija, came down the stairs and found her mother scorched. Then she saw her father engulfed in flames.”

In a desperate attempt to save them, the 27-year-old ran to the garden well for water. But it was too late. Her parents, Ġużeppi and Giovanna, died at the scene. Marija herself, badly burned, succumbed to her injuries 15 days later.

“She was suffering so much,” Farrugia says.

The tragedy tore through Rabat, claiming entire families.

Among the victims were Loreta Maranci, 34, and her young children Vincenza, aged two and a half, and 11-month-old Ġużeppi; 75-year-old Filippa Said; Giovanni Ciantar, 59, along with his daughter Felica Vella, 35, and her children, 14-year-old Karmena and 18-month-old Vincent. The youngest victim was just three months old.

A mystery that remains unsolved

Despite investigations, the exact cause of the crash was never determined.

Some witnesses reported seeing smoke and flames coming from the aircraft before it went down. However, these claims were not confirmed by others, including pilot officer Gilchrist, who saw the incident unfold.

Magistrate Albert Camilleri concluded that the crew may have been incapacitated - possibly by fumes from a hydraulic fluid leak - noting that no distress call was sent and no attempt was made to recover the aircraft from its fatal dive.

A wreath was laid on the site of the crash. Photo: Matther Mirabelli