18 in RAF Band Die in German Bus-Truck Crash

Eighteen members of Britain’s Royal Air Force band and their German driver were killed Monday in “a sea of flames” when a double-decker bus carrying about 40 members of the band collided with a tanker truck carrying about 9,000 gallons of aviation fuel.

Another 19 occupants of the bus were injured and five escaped unhurt in what Bavarian police called the worst bus accident in nearly 20 years.

A police spokesman said the crash occurred at about 3 p.m. Monday at Langenbruck, about 18 miles north of Munich, on the icy Nuremberg-Munich highway.

The spokesman said that about 1,200 gallons of the tanker’s fuel cargo spilled and caught fire, forcing the closure of the highway for several hours.

Authorities said the truck driver, who escaped injury, apparently slammed on his brakes when he realized that fuel was leaking from the vehicle. He then went into the skid, and the bus then slammed into the truck.

A British army spokesman said the band had been due to play at the 30th anniversary Wednesday of the opening of an RAF survival training school in the Bavarian Alpine village of Bad Kohlgrub.