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At the end of
September 2009 Mr. Patrick Mark of Mark Stuart Productions,
London, made two visits to the cemetery along with Simon, his
cameraman and Gail the sound lady.
Patrick's company had been commissioned by the Bahrain Civil Aviation Affairs to make a film of the 'History of Aviation' in Bahrain for the Bahrain International Air Show (BIAS 2010) to be held 21, 22, 23 January 2010. The cemetery contains a wealth of history, having been established in 1901. Aviation related objects in the Cemetery include the grave of Flight Lieutenant Peter Dabney Heinemann who in December 1931 flew his Fairy Fly-catcher, bi-winged float plane from a visiting British warship. His flight was part of a display for local dignitaries, who were on board the ship at the time. He dived and machine gunned a floating target towed behind the warship (it is not recorded if he scored any hits or not) but at the end of his dive he failed to pull up and crashed into the sea. It is believed that the ejected cartridges from the machine gun may have jammed his elevator, thus making it impossible for him to pull out of the dive. He was buried the next day with full military honours in the Cemetery and his funeral was attended by the local dignitaries who had been on the ship the previous day and witnessed the unfortunate accident. Mr. Charles Belgrave subsequently invoiced the British Political Agency for 38 rupees in respect of the funeral expenses. It is believed that this was the first ever aviation accident to occur in Bahrain. Six of the 10 victims of the BOAC aircrash in 1947 are buried in the cemetery. The aircraft, a flying boat, en route from Hong Kong to the UK bounced and crashed on landing at Juffair. In June 1950, two Air France DC-4 aircraft, both en route from Saigon to Paris, crashed in the sea 3.3 miles from the end of the runway at Muharraq, within 24 hours of each other! Tragically, the second aircraft was carrying an air accident investigation team who were going to investigate the first crash. Eighty six people were killed in the two crashes. There were only 19 survivors. The victims of both crashes were initially buried in the cemetery but were all subsequently exhumed and returned to France. A memorial to the victims remains in the cemetery, with a plaque and part of one of the actual aircraft engines and propellers
which was
recovered from the sea by Mr. Kevin Patience, a previous
secretary of the Christian Community Cemetery Committee.
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