This is a recording made in 2006 where Willie Hughes, then aged 97, recalled the Sunday morning when the plan landed in Ballinrobe.

Willie ran a business in the town. He would have been 26 years old at the time and recalls vividly hearing the plane overhead and realising it was in trouble and about to land.

He and a good friend Oggie McDermott where among the very first people to get to the scene of the crash, running the mile and half to the site.

He describes the scene that greeted him and his surprise that Waitkus had been able to land the machine in a field with such undulating terrain and emerge unscathed.

Willie passed away two years after the recording.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.