Remains of 12 plane crash victims exhumed, airlifted

KOTA BARU: The remains of the 12 crew of the ill-fated British Royal Air Force (RAF) Douglas DC 3 Dakota KN630 aircraft which crashed 58 years ago, was airlifted from the rough terrain of Gua Musang to Kota Baru.

The remains, which authorities are hoping would be that of nine British military personnel and three Malaysians, were brought to the Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM)’s forensic unit late Friday.

There DNA testing is being done to verify the identities of the 12 crewmembers who perished during the height of the communist insurgency in the then Malaya.

HUSM director Datuk Dr Zaidun Kamari confirmed the arrival of the remains but declined further comment, saying the Armed Forces headquarters (Mindef) would be release further information.

On Aug 25, 1950, flight KN630 took off from its base in Changi, Singapore to Kota Baru where it picked up three local passengers, a Royal Federation of Malaya police constable Mohamad Abdul Lalil @ Jalil (service number 9364), an unnamed orang asli and a civilian attached to the Kelantan development agency arm, Yaakup Mamat.

Enroute to a mission to lay down smoke markers for RAF Bombardier aircraft, the DC3 Dakota crashed in the steep forested foothills in the Gua Musang district.

A platoon of British troops went to the rescue and they reached the crash site, but due to the communist threat, they hastily buried the dead in makeshift graves.

In 2006, relatives of the British men appealed to London and Kuala Lumpur to help recover their remains.

A team led by the army and aided by the police museum, local historians and representatives of the British High Commission, including their military forensic experts, was formed to extricate the remains and debris of the historic aircraft.

It took the team some 12 months to find the exact location in the heavily forested rough terrain and airlift the remains in Nuri helicopters due to the difficulty in

However, they only managed to recover a 10m right wing and part of the plane’s tail. The rest of the America-made aircraft is believed to have rusted away or carried away by river water during floods.

The actual site was discovered off Kampung Penchang in Gua Musang with the aid of orang asli trekkers and soldiers under the Eighth Brigade based in Pengkalan Chepa last month after several earlier scouting missions.

In a related development, Police Museum director and historian Supt Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Zain said the police managed to trace the next of kin of Abdul Lalil and Yaakup last month.

The initial relatives traced were Abdul Lalil’s younger brother and Yaakup’s grandchild in Muar (Johor) and Kuala Lumpur respectively.

He said if the DNA testing confirms the kinship, they would be invited to a series of joint Malaysia-British military ceremonies soon.

The highlight would be a full military burial for the crewmembersat the Commonwealth Military burial ground in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

The DC3 Dakota aircraft was a workhorse after World War II for the RAF in Malaya with bases in Butterworth, Penang and Singapore.

This aircraft also flew over 2,500 sorties and did 4,000 hours of aerial broadcasting in the psychological warfare against the communists who hid in jungles.