The World - News from Feb. 12, 1985

Eighteen members of Britain’s Royal Air Force band and their German driver were killed when a double-decker bus carrying about 40 band members collided with a tanker truck loaded with aviation fuel north of Munich. Nineteen other passengers were injured, and five escaped unhurt in what Bavarian police called the worst bus accident in almost 20 years. The band had been due to play at the 30th anniversary Wednesday of the opening of an RAF survival training school in an Alpine village. At the time of the accident, the bus was en route from an RAF base at Rheindahlen. “It was a sea of flames,” a police spokesman said.