Missile attack on civilian airliner

The crash in July 2014 of a civilian airliner over the Ukraine has been widely attributed to a surface to air missile fired near the Russian border.  World leaders and media commentators were quick to condemn this terrible event – although, whoever did the deed, it was almost certainly not intended to hit a civilian aircraft. The Ukrainian military had themselves most likely used a missile to shoot down a Russian airliner by mistake over the Black Sea in 2001 whilst en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk and killed all on board. And of course in 1988 the USA itself shot down an Iranian airliner in error.

But, terrible though this latest event was, their reaction shows the awful double standards of leaders in Britain, Europe and the USA..

Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight deliberately shot down by TERRORISTS of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978 using a Russian made SAM7. The aircraft involved, a Vickers Viscount named the Hunyani, was flying the last leg of Air Rhodesia’s regular scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba. Despite losing two engines on the same side, the pilot miraculously managed to crash land the plane. Of the 56 passengers and crew, 38 were killed but 18 survived! Some moved off to seek help while others, including the injured, remained near the plane.  TERRORISTS then arrived and machine gunned 10 of the survivors before looting the plane wreckage. Those who had moved away into the bush witnessed what happened..

Terrorist leader Jushua Nkomo claimed responsibility for the attack in an interview with the BBC on the evening of 3 September 1978, laughing as he did so, to the horror of most Rhodesians..

The key point of interest is that not a single world political or religious leader condemned this awful deliberate atrocity!  .

Please do listen to the short but powerful eulogy by the Very Rev. John da Costa from the memorial service held in Salisbury Cathedral.

Air Rhodesia, began developing anti-missile shielding for its Viscounts but, before the work was completed, terrorists shot down a second civilian airliner: Viscount, Umniati, Air Rhodesia Flight 827, on 12 February 1979. This time all 59 on board were killed.  Again the world looked the other way…….

After the 2nd missile attack, Air Rhodesia coated the underside of the Viscounts with low-radiation paint and the exhaust pipes were concurrently shrouded. According to tests conducted by the Air Force, a Viscount so treated could not be detected by the Strela SAM7 system once it was over 2 000 feet.  No more airliners were shot down in Rhodesia.