After beating Red Star Belgrade 2-1 in the European Cup quarter-finals first leg, in 1958, at Old Trafford, Manchester United travelled to Yugoslavia and had the tie wrapped up by half time. Dennis Viollet put United ahead within 90 seconds and he then had a header disallowed on 14 minutes. Bobby Charlton scored one of his 30 yard screamers to make the score 2-0 on 30 minutes and one minute later, Duncan Edwards caused mayhem in the Red Start area with another goal. Red Star scored three in the second half to draw level but it would not have been enough as they needed four to force aplay off. The "Busby Babes" would get another chance to break Real Madrid's strong hold on the Europen Cup and win a place in European Cup history.
The Babes would indeed be guaranteed their place in history, but in the most tragic way. In the wake of the Superga Disaster, many clubs divided their squads in two and sent parties off in separate aircrafts. United did not! Their return flight from Belgrade stopped to refuel at Munich Airport, where it was snowing, but the pilot tried to take off and aborted two attempts which failed. On the third attempt, there was so much slush on the runway, the plane could not raise enough speed to take off and skidded off the runway at 157mph. careering into a nearby building, into which the impact killed 21 of the 44 passengers including; Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Tommy Taylor and Billy Whelan-smoe names not so familiar to people under than "us"! Byrne was the oldest in the group at 28 years. Ducan Edwards survived the crash but died 15 days later. Red Star reponded to the tragedy by asking UEFA for Manchester United to become "Honorary Champions of Europe" but UEFA did not accept this gesture.
In May, United won the first leg of the Semi-Final against Milan2-1 but lost the return 0-4. Real Madrid went on to win the Trophy.
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