Seventy-seven years ago, in the late afternoon of May 4, 1949, Italian football lost forever one of its strongest teams ever. It was 5.03pm when a Fiat G.212CP trimotor crashed into the Superga hill, in Piedmont, at an altitude of 675 metres, taking with it 31 human lives – including all the Grande Torino players, returning from a friendly match in Portugal against Benfica.
The G.212CP was a training monoplane that had entered service just the year before, nicknamed the “flying classroom” for its educational use. With almost 23 meters of fuselage and almost 30 meters of wingspan, it was still an aircraft with evident technical limitations compared to today’s standards. That morning he left Lisbon at 9.52am for Turin.
Approaching Piedmont, the pilot found himself faced with prohibitive weather conditions: intense rain, strong wind, thick fog. In certain points, near the Superga hill, visibility was reduced to just 40 metres. In an attempt to descend below the clouds to recover visual references and orient itself towards the runway, the plane took a fatal trajectory, colliding with the basilica before anyone on board could even notice.
There is still no definitive and certified explanation today. The most accredited reconstructions point to a combination of factors: extreme weather conditions, insufficient on-board instrumentation for safe blind navigation, and – according to some hypotheses – a possible malfunction of the altimeter, which would have indicated an altitude much higher than the real one, deceiving the crew during the descent. A mix of bad luck, technological limitations and bad weather which in a few seconds wiped out a team that has become legendary.
The consequences of the tragedy
The heartbreaking task of recognizing the bodies of the players and managers fell to coach Vittorio Pozzo. The funeral was held on 6 May at the Cathedral of Turin and saw unprecedented popular participation: over 600,000 people poured into the streets of the capital to pay their final farewell to the team. Among those present also Giulio Andreotti representing the Government and the president of the FIGC Ottorino Barassi. The funeral chamber was set up in Palazzo Madama, in Piazza Castello, while Rai broadcast live radio commentary of the funeral, entrusted to editor-in-chief Vittorio Veltroni.
The championship was not yet over and Torino had to play the remaining four matches using their youth team. In a spontaneous and touching gesture of respect, the opposing teams – Genoa, Palermo, Sampdoria and Fiorentina – also took to the field with their young players. At the end of the season, the Football Federation proclaimed Torino champions of Italy: it was the sixth title in Granata history, the fifth in a row. The team would not win the championship again for another 27 years, until the 1975-1976 season.
The collective trauma also left a profound mark on the Italian national team: the following year, to go to the World Cup in Brazil, the federation chose to travel by ship for two weeks, giving up a flight that would have taken just 35 hours. A choice that tells, more than any words, how much that tragedy had affected the entire world of football.
Seven of the eighteen footballers were buried in the monumental cemetery of Turin, while another ten were buried in their municipalities of origin after private funerals. The remains of the aircraft – a propeller, a tyre, fragments of the fuselage and even some of the players’ suitcases – are today preserved in the Museum of Grande Torino and the Granata Legend, housed in the Villa Claretta Assandri in Grugliasco and inaugurated on 4 May 2008, on the 59th anniversary of the tragedy.
