Many Englishmen have come to Australia looking for a better life and most have done so; there are however exceptions.
Colin Forman lived in London and after school studied at Suffield University and when he graduated migrated to Australia. Arriving in Melbourne he worked as a tram driver for the Melbourne Metropolitan Tramways Board.
Forman was described as a loner and shy young man, who was hard to get along with and slightly overweight. He had trouble adjusting to life in Australia and in 1974 decided to head back to England.
Colin Forman
Unfortunately, he was short of money and so forged a QANTAS airline ticket. Destined to fail the forgery was discovered and he was apprehended and charged, with a conviction recorded against him.
The conviction proved a millstone around his neck, following him wherever he went the rest of his life; which turned out to be a short three years.
Resigned to the fact he was stuck in Australia for the foreseeable future he decided to follow his passion for aviation. Forman travelled to New South Wales where he began training for a commercial pilot’s licence which he earned, topping his class at the Nationwide Aviation Space Academy in Cessnock.
With his sights set on a career as a pilot Forman travelled to Alice Springs to work for Connellan Airways (Connair), which at the time was a moderately-sized airline offering passenger and cargo services in northern Australia.
The job was as second crew on their de Havilland Doves with his duties divided between cabin service and cockpit. Little more than a glorified cabin attendant role it didn’t involve much actual flying and to gain promotion, he needed to develop his competency as a pilot.
Unfortunately, he failed an instrument rating training and then seven weeks after starting the company learned of his prior forgery conviction. It was enough for management to terminate him; which Forman didn’t take well.
Forman secured work as a pilot with Ord Air Charter in Wyndham, Western Australia where he was given a role with actual flying duties.
He was terminated after two months after the company received numerous complaints for his cavalier flying style. However Forman apparently believed that the proprietor of Connair, Roger Connellan, had informed Ord Air about his conviction.
A despondent Forman left Kununurra in Western Australia to Mount Isa where he hoped his past indiscretions were unknown. Arriving in September he flew occasional charter flights for freight and tourists in a single-engine Cessna and joined the Mount Isa Aero Club.
Peter Charles-Smith knew Forman and said he "lived and breathed" flying and been regarded as a very competent pilot, but, at times, his attitude was "a bit smart".
What no one saw was the impact his dismissal from his job in Wyndham had done to his mental state. On the day he was dismissed he wrote in his logbook, in red ink, "Sentenced to death".
A month later he told a fellow member of the Aero Club who was a local journalist,
"If I don't get a job by Christmas then you will get to know, and through you most of the world will know."
It was a strange comment and its meaning only surfaced in the new year.
He attended the Aero Club’s New Year's Eve party.
Early on the morning of 3 January Forman trashed his one-bedroom flat in Mount Isa, smashing furniture and wardrobe drawers. He piled the remnants in a corner of his lounge room and created what was described as an altar.
On the top of it lay mementos of his time as a pilot, including the trophy he won for topping his class at the flying school in Cessnock. Laying open was his log book with a flight plan for the 5 January, 1977 filled out.
“Suicide Mission” was written at the top and underneath the date, aircraft type, call sign and his intention of flying into Connair’s Alice Spring’s office; "to kill and maim as many employees of Connair Pty Ltd as possible."
The final words were "THE END" on the left and right pages respectively.
He left Mount Isa to drive to Wyndham, staying overnight at Katherine. The reason for driving to Wyndham was because he knew he would be able to steal a much larger plane than he could in Mount Isa.
On the 5 January he went to the airport and upon discovering the aircraft he wanted to use by the Royal Flying Doctor Service that day so stole a smaller Beechcraft 58 Baron.
Four hours later he reached Alice Springs Airport and broadcast a final message over the radio, "It is better to die with honour than live without it – Echo – November – Alpha."
Forman then set full power on both engines, aimed at the Connellan complex and flew the aircraft into the centre of the building.
The fuel tank on the plane’s wing burst into flames and the resulting explosion ripped holes in the front and back of the building.
Forman died and three others were killed on impact, including his former manager Roger Connellan, son of airline founder Edward Connellan. A secretary was badly burned and died of her injuries in hospital five days later.
Tony Byrnes today (picture by Tom Maddocks)
Tony Byrnes was an aircraft engineer who suffered third-degree burns to 75 per cent of his body, including his face. He was working in a machine shop at the time and remembers the huge explosion.
"(There was) this huge explosion and just felt like we were inside a red hot furnace." Byrnes recalled on the 40th anniversary of the disaster. "Survival was what I thought, so you run where you can see light and that's what I did.
"I was just running along with skin hanging off ... like Glad Wrap. I didn't know what to do, [I was] dazed I suppose,"
Neil Gurney worked for the Civil Aviation Department when the incident occurred and was in a workshop next to the hangar.
"He was coming in at right angles to the runway, rather than parallel if you can imagine, you know, the way you should land," he told the ABC in Alice Springs.
"He flew straight into the building, into the smoko room. Luckily he was about five or 10 minutes late, and most of them had just left."
It was a miscalculation by Forman that meant the number of deaths was not much more. He calculated his four hour’s flying time to arrive at 10am while Connair employees were on their morning break.
He did not factor in the one-and-a-half-hour time difference between Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Forman was only 23-years-old at the time of the attack, which is known as the Connair disaster. It remains one of only two aircraft suicide attacks in Australia's history.
During the subsequent investigation, police found not only the alter but letters addressed to the Department of Transport explaining his motivations.
In them he related his court appearance, described his seven weeks working at Connair as the happiest in his life, and his employment issues following his dismissal.
The story attracted considerable media attention but within weeks was bumped off the front page due to the Granville rail disaster in Sydney. The death toll was 83 and to this day remains the single worst train derailment in Australian history in terms of fatalities.
When terrorists flew aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon many media outlets mistakenly claimed it was ‘the first recorded deliberate acts of aircraft being flown into buildings”.
One reason the incident is not so well known is that the families of many of the victims have chosen not to talk about it to the media or historians. The original Connellan Airways Hangar houses the Central Australian Aviation Museum but has no mention of the disaster.
In a sign of their disappointment Forman’s parents refused to have his remains returned to England; so he is buried at Alice Springs - within sight of Roger Connellan’s grave.