 An Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount, similar to the aircraft involved in the incident | |
| Shootdown summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | 12 February 1979 |
| Summary | Civilian airliner shoot-down during wartime |
| Site |
Vuti African Purchase Area 16°25′S 29°26′E / 16.417°S 29.433°ECoordinates: 16°25′S 29°26′E / 16.417°S 29.433°E |
| Passengers | 55 |
| Crew | 4 |
| Fatalities | 59 |
| Survivors | 0 |
| Aircraft type | Vickers Viscount |
| Operator | Air Rhodesia |
| Registration | VP-YND |
| Flight origin | Salisbury |
| Last stopover | Kariba |
| Destination | Salisbury |
| |||||
Air Rhodesia Flight 827, the Umniati, was a scheduled flight between Kariba and Salisbury that was shot down on 12 February 1979 by Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) guerrillas using a Strela 2 missile soon after take-off. The circumstances were very similar to that of Air Rhodesia Flight 825 five months earlier. To date, it remains the deadliest aviation incident in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Incident description[]
The flight's departure from Kariba had been delayed, so it had not climbed over the lake to get above the ceiling of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles before heading for Salisbury.[1] The aircraft was damaged by a Strela 2 missile and came down in rough terrain in the Vuti African Purchase Area east of Lake Kariba.[2] None of the 59 passengers or crew survived.[3]
Aftermath[]
See also: Operation Vanity
Following the second incident, Air Rhodesia added shrouding to the exhaust pipes of their Viscount aircraft to reduce their infrared signature, and painted the aircraft with a low-radiation paint as countermeasures against heat-seeking missiles.[1]
On the 25th February 1979, the Rhodesian Air Force, with covert assistance from the South African Air Force, launched Operation Vanity, a retaliatory bombing raid against a ZIPRA camp near Livingstone, Zambia.[4]
See also[]
- List of airliner shootdown incidents
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 P. J. H. Petter-Bowyer (2003). Winds of Destruction. Trafford Publishing. ISBN 1-4120-1204-X. https://books.google.com/books?id=J9aDWeGoFKEC.
- ↑ Geoffrey Nyarota (2006). Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman. Zebra Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=B2Jp-k0WVWAC. Retrieved 18 May 2008.
- ↑ "Description of Air Rhodesia Flight RH827". Aviation-Safety.net. http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19790212-1. Retrieved 8 February 2008.
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/02/18/rhodesian-aircraft-attack-guerrilla-camps-in-zambia/be84431e-4fb3-4851-bf37-2f4c44d02ca4/
The original article can be found at Air Rhodesia Flight 827 and the edit history here.