September 4: On This Day in World History … briefly
Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on September 3, 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War.
1978: Double death trap
Rebel guerillas shot down a Rhodesian airliner with a Russian SAM-7 missile today, then massacred survivors. The missile blew the starboard wing off, killing 38 of the 56 people aboard when the plane crashed in the bush. The survivors were nursing their wounds when the guerrillas appeared and opened fire, killing a further 10 people. The rebels said that the airline was ‘a military target’.
ZIPRA leader Joshua Nkomo publicly claimed responsibility for shooting down the ‘Hunyani’ in an interview with the BBC’s ‘Today’ programme the next day, saying the aircraft had been used for military purposes, but denied that his men had killed survivors on the ground. The majority of Rhodesians, both black and white, saw the attack as an act of terrorism.
A fierce white Rhodesian backlash followed against enemy strongholds and increased racial tension even though few black Rhodesians supported attacks of this kind. Reports viewing the attack negatively appeared in international journals such as ‘Time’ magazine, but there was almost no acknowledgement of it by overseas governments, much to the Rhodesian government’s indignation.
Talks between Nkomo and Prime Minister Ian Smith, which had been progressing promisingly, were immediately suspended by the Rhodesians, with Smith calling Nkomo a ‘monster’. On 10 September, Smith announced the extension of martial law over selected areas. The Rhodesian Security Forces launched several retaliatory strikes into Zambia and Mozambique over the following months, attacking both ZIPRA and its rival, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA).
The attack on ZIPRA in particular brought great controversy as many of those killed were refugees camping in and around guerrilla positions. In February 1979, ZIPRA shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 827, another civilian flight, in an almost identical incident.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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