In the same way people from the Baby Boomer generation all remember where they were the day John F. Kennedy was killed, later generations know exactly what they were doing when it was announced that a passenger airliner had crashed into the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 259 passengers and crew along with 11 people on the ground. Years later, the Libyan government acknowledged its responsibility for the tragedy. What a lot of people do not know, the Pan Am Flight 103 air crash investigation revealed that the airline was guilty of wilful misconduct for not matching up each piece of luggage with the correct passenger.
The pre-flight inspection had turned up no problems with the airliner before it departed from the airport in Frankfurt. Evidence later revealed that the plain had been struck by a bomb from the charred remains of that part of the airliner's hold. Bombs continue to be a menace to the aviation industry. They are most often found to have been hidden in someone's luggage.
It is not always a bomb that brings a commercial passenger airliner crashing to the ground. Since the 1940s, passenger aircraft have been shot down using major artillery. Not a decade has gone by since then without at least one report of an airliner being brought down in this way.
In 2007, an Antonov An-26 airliner carrying 35 people crashed while attempting to land in Balad, Iraq. One person was injured, seriously, while the other 34 occupants of the plane were killed. Officially, the cause of the crash was put down to bad weather. There are others who were convinced that a missile had brought the plane down.
One really nasty incident took place over three days in September 1993. One Transair Georgia airliner after another was shot down by SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) on September 21, 22 and 23. The first one, a flight from Sochi carrying 22 passengers and 5 crew, ended up in the Black Sea. All souls aboard perished. The next day, an airliner carrying Georgian soldiers, crashed on the runway after being shot down. The final episode in the trilogy ended with the death of a crew member when the plane was struck by a mortar or some other type of artillery.
An Iranian Air Force C-130, carrying Iranian embassy staff, was shot down in 1994 by American military forces. All 19 passengers and 13 crew, perished. That same year, the presidents of the African states of Burundi and Rwanda were reportedly shot down in the same plane near the Rwandan capital. The plane is believed to have been shot down by rocket fire.
The deadliest crash involving a DC-9-10/15 series aircraft occurred in 1980, when a plane carrying 81 people crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the Italian island of Ustica off the coast of Naples. The President of Italy at the time blamed the French. In 2013, an Italian criminal court ruled that it was abundantly clear the flight had been terminated by a missile.
The first known occasion when civilian passengers were killed in a military-motivated crime was on June 14, 1940. Here, Passengers flying from Tallinn, a city in Estonia, were shot down by Soviet torpedo bombers while en route to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The Winter War, a military conflict between Finland and the Soviets, had ended just three months previously.
The pre-flight inspection had turned up no problems with the airliner before it departed from the airport in Frankfurt. Evidence later revealed that the plain had been struck by a bomb from the charred remains of that part of the airliner's hold. Bombs continue to be a menace to the aviation industry. They are most often found to have been hidden in someone's luggage.
It is not always a bomb that brings a commercial passenger airliner crashing to the ground. Since the 1940s, passenger aircraft have been shot down using major artillery. Not a decade has gone by since then without at least one report of an airliner being brought down in this way.
In 2007, an Antonov An-26 airliner carrying 35 people crashed while attempting to land in Balad, Iraq. One person was injured, seriously, while the other 34 occupants of the plane were killed. Officially, the cause of the crash was put down to bad weather. There are others who were convinced that a missile had brought the plane down.
One really nasty incident took place over three days in September 1993. One Transair Georgia airliner after another was shot down by SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) on September 21, 22 and 23. The first one, a flight from Sochi carrying 22 passengers and 5 crew, ended up in the Black Sea. All souls aboard perished. The next day, an airliner carrying Georgian soldiers, crashed on the runway after being shot down. The final episode in the trilogy ended with the death of a crew member when the plane was struck by a mortar or some other type of artillery.
An Iranian Air Force C-130, carrying Iranian embassy staff, was shot down in 1994 by American military forces. All 19 passengers and 13 crew, perished. That same year, the presidents of the African states of Burundi and Rwanda were reportedly shot down in the same plane near the Rwandan capital. The plane is believed to have been shot down by rocket fire.
The deadliest crash involving a DC-9-10/15 series aircraft occurred in 1980, when a plane carrying 81 people crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the Italian island of Ustica off the coast of Naples. The President of Italy at the time blamed the French. In 2013, an Italian criminal court ruled that it was abundantly clear the flight had been terminated by a missile.
The first known occasion when civilian passengers were killed in a military-motivated crime was on June 14, 1940. Here, Passengers flying from Tallinn, a city in Estonia, were shot down by Soviet torpedo bombers while en route to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The Winter War, a military conflict between Finland and the Soviets, had ended just three months previously.
About the Author:
You can visit www.threesistersponds.com for more helpful information about The Truth About Pan Am Flight 103 Air Crash Investigation.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Gimme your 2 cents!