Irish and British authorities were last night confronted with further claims challenging official versions of the events surrounding the 1968 Tuskar Rock air crash.
It was claimed that documents uncovered by a private investigator allege that bodies from the air disaster were cremated by the British authorities to cover up evidence that the plane was hit by a missile fired from a Royal Navy ship.
According to Mr Jerome McCormack, of the Tuskar Tragedy Relatives Support Group, documents show that British authorities were anxious that only bodies showing signs of death due to impact with water should be returned to the Irish authorities. Just 14 bodies were recovered.
The documents were uncovered in America by a private investigator hired by Ms Bonnie Gangelhoff, whose parents died in the crash that claimed all 61 lives on board the St Phelim on March 26th 1968. According to Mr McCormack the documents show that the HMS Penelope was conducting missile tests with the new Seadart missile and one of the missiles hit the Aer Lingus Viscount. The report said the plane's transponder - which returns radar signals to ground stations - failed and the plane did not register on British radar screens.
Mr McCormack said the group was anxious to hear from anyone who could either confirm or deny the report's authenticity, and he promised they would continue campaigning until the full truth of what happened is known.
However, earlier yesterday the British embassy reiterated that it believes there is no new evidence about the crash and "no reason whatsoever for a new investigation". The comment comes before next week's meeting to discuss the crash between the British ambassador, Dame Veronica Sutherland, and the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke.
Thirty years on, the 200 relatives of the dead, supported by members of the Oireachtas, have retained a legal team and want all papers on the crash released. They are concerned that much of the crash recovery was effectively handled by the British Ministry of Defence (MOD), a body which may have not wanted to reveal its military testing arrangements.
However, the MOD has consistently denied this and although its full report was not released until last September, it insists its only role was to assist in the recovery operation.
A spokesman for the British embassy in Dublin appeared to dampen any expectation that new revelations could be expected. He told The Irish Times that the ambassador had met relatives of the crash victims as "a humanitarian gesture" in November but had no further information to offer them.
The spokesman said the meeting with Ms O'Rourke was taking place "in the same light".
It was 11.32 a.m. on Sunday, March 24th, 1968, when Aer Lingus flight EI 172 left Cork Airport for Heathrow, London. It was a clear, sunny day and the aircraft, the St Phelim, a Vickers Viscount, was carrying 57 passengers and four crew. The passengers were from Switzerland, Britain, Belgium and Ireland and included a brother of the deputy general manager of Aer Lingus, Mr Desmond Walls.
At 11.57 a.m., the aircraft was south of Hook Head, Co Wexford, travelling along the designated route between Cork and Tuskar Rock. Forty-one seconds later, a message was picked up by Heathrow: "12,000 feet descending, spinning rapidly". A further message: "1,000 feet descending, spinning rapidly", were the last words heard from flight EI 172.
Speculation on a possible cause initially centred initially on a jamming of the plane's aircraft's control flaps.
In 1970 the Irish government's official report found no obvious reason for the disaster but its author, Mr Richard O'Sullivan, said: "The conclusion that there was another aircraft involved is inescapable. No aircraft have been reported missing but there remains the possibility that an unmanned aircraft, either a drone target aircraft or a missile, might have been there."
An RTE Prime Time programme on the anniversary of the crash last year produced evidence supporting the missile theory. The programme suggested that additional wreckage in the water was taken to the UK - a claim denied by the British MOD.