Who is this Wendy Wheal?

I remember reading an archive British newspaper report and in it there was a photograph of Wendy Wheal (I believe) as one of the four fashion models killed in the crash. I very much thought the website was over and it had achieved what I believed need to be achieved. But something is missing. In a conversation with Bruno Druesne perhaps the catalyst to houour those who perished, the goal* which we both set out to be has not materialized fully.

Here is an example: " I was looking for Miss Wendy Wheal's image in the internet. Then I though I could find some images in Corbis -The biggest image archive....Unfortunately I could never reach her but this one...and the other images having listed under the same keyword "Turkish Airlines Paris". Who deserves to lay down on the ground as upper half out like this!!* Oh the God...you are so big...you are the source of all the things...and all the reasons...we will never understand. Wendy in Blue Dress was by shown on TV which was re-creation for National Geography.

Please try to find an image of the real Wendy for me...Do something for her...She merits a reward to take place in your TK981 blog with her model image. Doesn't she?"

* A crash image of a bust of a women that appears to be doctored

Here is another: " Thirty five years to the day I still remember with great love my girlfriend Kailan Wilcox, daughter of Wayne Wilcox (Cultural Attache to the American Embassy in London) who died on that fateful day. All my love forever. Mike"

As for Wendy Wheal, her private life seems to fascinate many people, I am dumbfounded by this. A book of her short career could capitalized on her as one of the three hundred and forty-five people killed that day, March 3rd, 1974 in a series of misfortune and man-made events that blinded Nejat Berkoz in his decisions to bring his ill-fated DC-10 to safety.

If you read the comments, you may agree that this tragedy foretells its burden to those still affected 36 years ago and the author, Paul Eddy who states, he has been consumed by it.

The London Times archive on March 4th, 1974, Wendy Wheal’s photograph may be available within the article

200 passengers from British Airways are among the 345 killed in worst plane crash on record Britons in two air horrors:

Turkish DC-10 disaster: reporter from 'The Times' from Charles Hargrove Mortefontaine, near Senlis, March 3rd Three hundred and forty five people, including the crew of 11 were killed when a DC-10 aircraft of Turkish Airlines crashed at 12.35 pm today jn the forest of Ermenonvile, north- east of Paris, a few minutes after taking off from: Orly airport. There were no survivors. It is the biggest air disaster of all time. The aircraft was on a regular flight from Ankara to London, by way of Paris.

Among the victims were 200 passengers, many of them British, who had been transferred to the Turkish Airlines flight as a number of British Airways. flights from Paris to London had been canceled today because of the strike of engineers and other staff at London airport. I visited the scene of the crash, four hours later. Thousands of people were converging on the site by car, cycle, and on foot. They cluttered the roads and paths into the forest, hampering rescue work. But the police kept them at a safe distance from the actual site.

None of the hundreds of strollers in the forest was killed by the crash, which occurred in a small sheltered valley, with a blanket of snow still on the ground, where no one had ventured. Over a stretch of 1,000 yards where the trees had been sheered off probably, a British Airwavs official said as the pilot attempted a crash landing, Only blackened stumps remained. Wreckage and mutilated human remains were strewn over the whole- area, from which smoke curled up. in places. Bits of clothing and of flesh clung from some of the trees. The aircraft seemed to have been pulverized. At the end of the valley, where what was left of it must have finally come to a standstill, there were one or two barely identifiable portions of the fuselage. I tripped over a part of a turbine. That was all.

Rescue operations got under way in record time, with remarkable, efficiency. The emergency Orsec plan, providing for big catastrophes, was decreed. Several hundred rescue workers, volunteers of the Red Cross and of the Protection Civile, together with the, fire brigade and ambulance teams from Senlis and the neighboring towns and villages were on the site half an hour after the. crash. The rescue workers quickly realized that there was no rescue work to be done and set about the gruesome task of collecting human remains. The bodies, battered and dismembered, were being- put into bags, or just covered with blankets, and piled up on stretch. Part of the fuselage of the Turkish airliner that crashed yesterday in the forest of Ermenonville, north-east of Paris, killing all 345 people on board.

* For Visitors willing to post documentations or to create links between families in the idea of establishing a living Association

Email: In French or English