Britain was at a standstill. Queen Elizabeth II, just six years into her reign, said she was “deeply shocked” and extended her “sympathy and that of [her] husband to the families of those who have been killed and to the injured”, as did Yugoslavia’s President Tito.

George Best was an 11-year-old child in Belfast who would go on to be arguably the greatest player in the game of soccer. Years later, he wrote in his autobiography: ‘The crash had happened in the middle of the afternoon and I remember people talking about it as I came home from school on the bus. I then turned on the radio when I got home and heard all the details. The whole thing had an air of unreality about it because for most normal people then, flying was a fantasy in itself.’

Nobby Stiles, a 15-year-old apprentice at Manchester United who would play alongside Charlton in the 1966 World Cup final, remembers a trainer coming into the dressing rooms and telling the young boys there had been a problem in Munich. ‘Stiles recalled that he was in denial for much of the day, even when, as he changed buses in a funereal city centre, he saw so many of the faces of the great team lined up on the front page of the evening newspaper under the bleakest of all headlines, “DEAD”’, wrote The Independent. The teenager knew his parents would not be home from work, so instead went to a nearby church: “I prayed and I wept, and I rocked back and forth in the pew. It could have been an hour or two, I don’t really know. There was no one else in the church. Then I went home. The lads were dead, or so I’d read, but people still had to work. I put the dinner in the oven, as my mum had told me to do that morning, in that other life.” Stiles, an altar boy, attended ten funerals in the aftermath of the crash.

Two questions stood out above all others: Would the club fold, and would the likes of Edwards and Busby, both critically ill in hospital, survive? ‘Jimmy Murphy and all the people from Old Trafford came to my bedside and one of the questions I kept asking was: “Where’s Duncan Edwards?”’ wrote Charlton in the United Opus, the club’s official history. ‘When I learnt that he was in the hospital and still alive, I said I had to see him. As soon as they let me put my clothes on I went upstairs to find him – and then he gave me a bollocking. He said: “Where the bloody hell have you been?” – just as he had that day when I reported late at the Army camp in Shropshire where we did our National Service, and he went off to find me a better mattress when he saw that the one I’d been given had bits falling out of it.’

Busby, meanwhile, was suffering from injuries so severe that he received the last rites. ‘We do not have much hope of saving him,’ read a simple statement from the Rechts der Isar Hospital doctors. Of the pair, he certainly appeared more likely to pass away than Edwards, described by doctors the day after the crash as being “a little better”, though the multiple leg fractures he had sustained meant they privately deemed him unlikely to play soccer again.

The same could be said for the club. The bodies of the dead were flown home on 7th February, and lay overnight in the Old Trafford gym. Thousands lined the streets of Manchester for the funerals, and two minutes’ silence were impeccably observed before every league match on the following Saturday. Or rather, every league match but one. Despite Edwards’ cheeky question to the men around his bedside – “What time is the kick off against Wolves? I mustn't miss that match!”  – United’s game with the challengers for their league title was cancelled.

Speculation that the club would have to close down continued. Desperate meetings were held: in the club offices; at the training ground; in hospital corridors. Then the club chairman, Harold Hardman, issued a statement which the world received with a mixture of disbelief and admiration: “Even if it means being heavily defeated, we will carry on with this season's programme. We have a duty to the public and a duty to football to carry out.”

Jimmy Murphy, Busby’s assistant, had not travelled to Munich; he had been coaching the national team of his native Wales for a World Cup qualifying match in Cardiff. He was handed the reins for the rest of the season, with an FA Cup match against Sheffield Wednesday the first challenge, and he swiftly set about organising the players available to him – mainly reserves and youth players who had been deeply affected by the tragedy. Rival clubs offered their assistance. Liverpool and Nottingham Forest were the first two to contact United asking what they could do to help. The FA waived its rule which ‘cup-ties’ a player once he has played in an FA Cup round in any particular season; Stan Crowther, bought from Aston Villa and ineligible but for the governing body’s decision, started against Sheffield Wednesday an hour after signing his name on the contract.

Murphy remembers a man far from keen to do so: “Eric Houghton was Villa manager at the time and he had told Stan that we were interested in him. He didn't want to leave Villa, but Eric got him to come to Old Trafford to watch the Sheffield Wednesday game. On the way up he told him he thought that he should help us out, but Stan told him he hadn't brought any kit with him. ‘Don't worry, I've got your boots in my bag,’ Eric said. We met at about half-past five and an hour before the kick-off he'd signed.”

Astonishingly, the team’s numbers and spirits were boosted by the inclusion of Foulkes and Gregg, the latter already being called the Hero of Munich. It was a title he hated: “I did what had to be done without thinking about it. I've lived with being called a hero but I'm not really a hero. Heroes are people who do brave things knowing the consequences of their actions. That day, I had no idea what I was doing,” he said later.

There were reminders everywhere of the tragedy that had befallen the champions. Where the United players’ names should have appeared in the match programme were blank spaces. Ian Greaves, who had come through United’s junior sides and was a regular in the reserves, found himself playing in club captain Byrne’s left back position: “I can remember the dressing room was very quiet. I couldn't get Roger out of my mind; I was getting changed where he would have sat. I was wearing his shirt.”