Air Rhodesia Flight 825

Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War. 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.

Soon after Flight 825 took off, a group of ZIPRA guerrillas hit it on its starboard wing with a Soviet-made Strela-2 surface-to-air infrared homing missile, critically damaging the aircraft and forcing an emergency landing. An attempted belly landing in a cotton field just west of Karoi was foiled by a ditch, which caused the plane to cartwheel and break up. Of the 52 passengers and four crew, 38 died in the crash; the insurgents then approached the wreckage, rounded up the 10 survivors they could see and massacred them with automatic gunfire. Three passengers survived by hiding in the surrounding bush, while a further five lived because they had gone to look for water before the guerrillas arrived.

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. Most Rhodesians, both black and white, saw the attack as an act of terrorism. A fierce Rhodesian backlash followed against enemy strongholds and increased racial tension. 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.

Background

A dispute over the terms for the granting of full sovereignty to the self-governing colony of Rhodesia led the colonial government, headed by Prime Minister Ian Smith, to unilaterally declare independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965. The idea of "no independence before majority rule" had recently gained ground in Britain and elsewhere amid decolonisation, and Rhodesia's government was dominated by the country's white minority, so the unilateral declaration went unrecognised internationally. Britain and the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Rhodesia.

Two rival communist-backed black nationalist groups initiated military campaigns to overthrow the government and introduce majority rule: the Chinese-aligned Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), mostly comprising Shonas, created the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and adopted aspects of Maoist doctrine, while the Ndebele-dominated Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), aligned with Soviet-style Marxism–Leninism and the Warsaw Pact, mobilised the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). These guerrilla armies proceeded to wage what they called the "Second Chimurenga" against the Rhodesian government and security forces. The resulting conflict, the Rhodesian Bush War, began on 4 July 1964.

After the security forces mounted a successful counter-insurgency campaign during 1973 and 1974, developments overseas caused the conflict's momentum to shift in the insurgents' favour. The leftist Carnation Revolution of April 1974 caused Portugal to withdraw its key economic support for Smith's administration, and led to Mozambique's independence the following year as a communist state openly allied with ZANU. Around the same time, Rhodesia's other main backer, South Africa, adopted a détente initiative that forced a ceasefire, giving the guerrillas time to regroup. Following the abortive Victoria Falls Conference of August 1975, Smith and the ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo held unsuccessful talks between December 1975 and March 1976. ZANU and ZAPU announced in October 1976, during the run-up to the unsuccessful Geneva Conference in December, that they would henceforth attend conferences as a joint "Patriotic Front".

In March 1978, Smith and non-militant nationalist groups headed by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau agreed what became the "Internal Settlement". This created a joint black–white transitional government, with the country due to be reconstituted as Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979, pursuant to multiracial elections. ZANU and ZAPU were invited to participate, but refused; Nkomo sardonically dubbed Smith's black colleagues "the blacksmiths". ZANU proclaimed 1978 to be "The Year of the People" as the war continued. Officials from Muzorewa's United African National Council, sent to the provinces to explain the Internal Settlement to rural blacks, were killed by Marxist–Leninist guerrillas. Insurgents also began to target Christian missionaries, climaxing in the killing of nine British missionaries and four children at Elim Mission near the Mozambican border in the Vumba massacre on 23 June.

The transitional government was badly received abroad, partly because the Internal Settlement kept control of law enforcement, the military, the judiciary and the civil service under white control. No country recognised Rhodesia's interim administration. Smith again worked to bring Nkomo into the government, hoping this would lend it some credence domestically, prompt diplomatic recognition overseas, and help the security forces defeat ZANLA. Starting on 14 August 1978, he attended secret meetings with Nkomo in Lusaka, Zambia (where ZAPU was based), doing so with the assistance of the mining corporation Lonrho. Attempts were made to also involve the ZANU leader Robert Mugabe, but Mugabe would have no part in the talks. According to the South African military historian Jakkie Cilliers, negotiations between Smith and Nkomo progressed well and "seemed on the verge of success" by the start of September 1978. On 2 September, Smith and Nkomo revealed publicly that the secret meetings had taken place.

Flight

Air Rhodesia was the country's national airline, established by the government on 1 September 1967 to succeed Central African Airways, which was dissolved at the end of that year. Based at Salisbury Airport, Air Rhodesia's flight network during the late 1970s comprised a domestic programme of passenger and cargo flights, as well as international services to the South African cities of Johannesburg and Durban.

The Flight 825 aircraft was a Vickers Viscount 782D, a British-made turboprop aircraft with two engines on each wing. It was named the Hunyani after the river of the same name, which flowed between Lake Kariba and the Rhodesian capital Salisbury.

The Hunyani was on the second and final leg of its regular scheduled journey between Victoria Falls and Salisbury, stopping over in the resort town of Kariba. Despite the occasional rocket and mortar attacks launched on Kariba by ZIPRA guerrillas on the northern side of the Zambezi (in Zambia), the resort had endured as one of Rhodesia's choice tourist destinations. The flight on 3 September 1978, Sunday afternoon, from Kariba to Salisbury carried four crew members and 52 passengers, most of whom were holidaymakers from Salisbury, returning home after a weekend at the lake. The flight took off from Kariba Airport on schedule soon after 17:00 Central Africa Time.

Flight 825 was piloted by 36-year-old Captain John Hood, a native of Bulawayo who had gained his commercial pilot licence in 1966. He had flown Viscounts for Air Rhodesia since 1968, and had also served in the Rhodesian Air Force on a voluntary basis. His first officer, Garth Beaumont, was 31 years old, and had lived in Rhodesia for most of his life, having immigrated as a child from South Africa. The two air stewardesses were Dulcie Esterhuizen, 21 years old and from Bulawayo, and 23-year-old Louise Pearson, from Salisbury.

Shootdown

A group of ZIPRA guerrillas, armed with a Strela-2 launcher, waited in the bush beneath Flight 825's flightpath, and fired on the Hunyani about five minutes after it took off, while the aircraft was still in the climb phase of its flight. The heat-seeking missile hit the plane's starboard wing and exploded, causing the inner engine to also explode. A fuel tank and hydraulic lines ruptured, creating a fire that could not be put out. The second starboard engine failed almost immediately, leaving Hood with only his two port engines. Heaving wildly, the Hunyani began to descend rapidly.

At 17:10 Captain Hood sent a distress call to air traffic control, informing them that he had lost the two starboard engines and was going to crash. "We're going in," he radioed. Telling his passengers to brace for an emergency landing, he aimed for an open field of cotton in the Whamira Hills, in the bush to the west of Karoi, intending to belly land the craft. The landing was relatively stable until the Hunyani hit a ditch, cartwheeled and exploded. The remaining fuel tanks ruptured and caught fire, setting the wrecked cabin ablaze.