For Bobby Charlton not a day goes by without his thoughts drifting back to the Munich air disaster that wiped out so many of the Busby Babes.

Those who died were not just team-mates but friends. In his recent autobiography "My Manchester United Years", Charlton wrote: "Even now it still reaches down and touches me every day. Sometimes I feel it quite lightly, a mere brush stroke against an otherwise happy mood.

"Sometimes it engulfs me with a terrible regret and sadness - and guilt that I walked away and found so much. The Munich air crash is always there, always a factor that can never be discounted."

Now aged 70, and with the 50th anniversary of the crash approaching, Charlton does not find it hard to talk about the moment his life changed forever.

While eight of his team-mates died as a result of the crash at Munich on February 6, 1958, he escaped with minor injuries.

He survived after being thrown from the plane and, despite being knocked unconscious, soon woke up on the runway.

Remarkably, he was playing football again less than a month later and played 759 matches for United until he retired in 1973 - more than any other in the club's history.

The 49 international goals he scored from 1958 to 1970 is still a record for England and although he won the World Cup in 1966 and the European Cup with a rebuilt United team in 1968, Munich remains the defining moment of his life.

"I obviously understand why people want to talk to me about it being that I was part of it, I survived it and I am still here," he told Reuters in an interview.

"I have no problem talking about the team or the players that were killed because they were so good and I was so proud to be playing with them."

The soccer world at the time of the Munich air disaster was nothing like today and while every journey United took in Europe was an adventure, it was an arduous one.

It all went tragically wrong at Munich, of course, when United's plane crashed on take-off after a refuelling stop on the way back from a European Cup match in Belgrade.

The European Cup, then the only major continental club competition, was still in its infancy having started in 1955-56, and trips to places like Belgrade, Milan or Madrid involved hours of flying and refuelling stops.

"It was nothing like today when we jump on our own plane and are in and out after the match," said Charlton. "It was work. But it was an adventure."

He believes that but for the crash and the loss of eight of Matt Busby's team, United would have won the European Cup in 1958 - and stopped Real Madrid's five-year winning streak which helped to establish them as the biggest club in the world.

"I think if the team had stayed together we would have won it in the year of the accident. Real Madrid won it for the first five years, but we were never going to go backwards once we set off on this path, to be the best in Europe.

"I remember when we played our first home match in Europe, I was wishing I was playing and we beat Anderlecht 10-0.

"Initially, we thought, 'Will we be good enough for this sort of thing? Will they be streets ahead of us?' Streets ahead of us? It was the opposite.

"Apart from Real Madrid at that particular time, really, we could play against anyone."

United, though, had to wait 10 years before Busby, who also survived the crash, rebuilt his club and his team.

Then, on May 29, 1968, Charlton scored twice as United beat Benfica 4-1 at Wembley Stadium to be crowned champions of Europe and finish the task that began in 1956.

"It was a marvellous night because it put things right in a way. The accident had happened, this great tragedy had taken place.

"It helped Matt Busby. It was his team, his lads who had died. This made it a little easier for him in some ways. I think he could feel happier because he missed the players more than anyone else," Charlton said.

"United was a family club and he was the father so you can imagine when it happened it was a tragedy that hit him more than anyone else."

Apart from one year at Preston North End as player-manager in 1973-74, Charlton has been at United since signing as a 15-year-old amateur in January 1953.

He has seen United grow to become one of the greatest clubs in the world.

But the events of that wintry night's disaster in Munich help Charlton to keep it all in perspective.

"My life, truly, has been a miracle granted to me," he wrote in the prologue to his book.

"But in Munich in 1958 I learnt that even miracles come at a price."