Italian 1980 crash probably caused by missile

[Farrell]

Italy 1980 plane crash probably caused by missile, court says - Yahoo! News Maktoob (http://en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/italy-1980-plane-crash-probably-caused-missile-court-205842528--sector.html)

[blind pew]

Failed intercept on Ghadaffi's exec jet and escort. Took out the Mig but missed Ghadaffi and hit DC9.
Radar tapes erased.
Initially blamed on the yanks but Italian court case suggested NATO aircraft - probably French.
Supporting evidence included several "witnesses" that made statements and disappeeared. Also letter in the Times from retired officer who had destroyed tapes.
Surprising that it has been kept "secret" for so long.

[Heathrow Harry]

I thought this was well known years ago................. :confused::confused:

[starling60]

Agree with Heathrow Harry. Families of victims still awaiting compensation.... Politics....:mad:

[blind pew]

Known?
The press carried reports that the DC9 was shot down by Gadaffi's Mig.
Denied the truth for two decades.
First time anyone official didn't speak with forked tongue.

[EMIT]

In Italy, aviation accidents are not investigated by an aviation accident investigation board, but by an appointed judge.

Because a judge is a layman, as far as aviation accident investigation is concerned, he may hire in, accident investigation professionals.

Those professionals will write a technical investigation report.

The judge will then decide, what HE considers to be the cause of the accident - whether HIS judgement is congruent with the result of the technical investigation, is a matter of conjecture.

The present ruling seems to be that the Italian state is culpable, thus shall pay compensation, because it failed to guarantee the safety of the Itavia DC-9. That failure to guarantee the safety, may be seen as a correct identification of the situation - after all, the DC-9 did crash, not as a result of an accident, but as result of a deliberate action.

The deliberate action however, WAS NOT A MISSILE, BUT AN EXPLOSIVE INSIDE THE DC-9. So much was the conclusion of the technical investigation of aviation accident investigation experts (and yes, those experts know about non-aviation like things such as explosives, they had Lockerbie under their belt already).

For interested readers, again the link to the real facts:

Supplementary paper offered to ISASI Seminar, Paris, October 1994 (http://www.airmanshiponline.com/spring2000/spring2000/05-isasdc9.htm)

For the rest: keep revelling again about the mysterious fighters, etcetera.

[blind pew]

Italy reopens probe into 1980 plane crash: media | Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/22/us-italy-crash-idUSL2264892420080622)

Interesting report Emit.
Doesn't explain why Italian radar records disappeared amongst other things I was told at the time and later read.
And why blow up a charter jet and not the national carrier?

[EMIT]

Why blow up the train station in Bologna (happened in the same era).

The accident investigators don 't try to give reasons why sick people blow up things with innocent bystanders in them, they just explore the debris and find out the sequence of events as they unfolded.

[racedo]

This is not news as info published 20 years plus on this.

[lilflyboy262...2]

How would you get a bomb on board a charter jet anyway?
It would have to be placed there by ground crew. Which unless they were targeting specific people on board that charter, it makes no sense.
As said before, why not go for the national carrier.

[Passenger 389]

http://aviation-safety.net/pubs/other/Taylor_paper_Ustica_illustrated.pdf

The pictures in this downloadable copy may be informative.


Missile conspiracy theories circulate after many initially unexplained crashes (and even some that were thoroughly explained). Almost never prove true.

Seems very improbable here as well. The US president was Jimmy Carter (and the United States was engrossed in the Iran hostage crisis). Targeting Qaddafi's plane is not something Carter would have considered doing. Reagan might, but he didn't take office until 1981.

[lomapaseo]

Much can be learned from the recovered debris, simply by comparing to other crashes both before and after, Ceritos DC9, CO DC9,Value jet DC9, TWA800, PA Lockerbie, French DC10 etc.) Some were low speed impacts into ground while others were highspeed steep nose down into ground. Some were loss of control, and some were internal explosions. Couple that with the available experience of known missile hits (mostly miltary) and a clearer point of cause (PRO and CON) can be had.

So why are we even speculating about an old report :confused: if this comparison evidence was evaluated by compentent investigators.

[aterpster]

So why are we even speculating about an old report http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/confused.gif if this comparison evidence was evaluated by compentent investigators.

We could move on to 1996 and TWA 800 and discuss comparison evidence and competent investigators, and so forth.

[MountainBear]

I am not an expert on the explosion patterns of missiles but I know enough engineering and physics to know that the report EMIT links to makes a sound point. If a missile shot down the plane there has to be some evidence of it. What was this? The magical invisible exploding missile? I don't think so. The comments about the military and radar tapes and stuff is crap, red herrings. Accident investigators aren't called upon to explain the motives of third parties. They follow the evidence. If a missile shot down this plane there had to be some physical evidence in the debris. It's as simple as that.

[Load Toad]

I too would have thought, from a laymans position, that there must have been some evidence of the missile that brought the 'plane down. Surely even if not a direct hit, missile warheads leave tell tale signs...? I think I recall a thread on PPRUNE where wreckage of an Argentinian jet on the Falklands was noted as having typical damage of an AIM-9L exploding near it...

[lederhosen]

The plane was travelling between Bologna (politically left) and Palermo (conservative/Mafia) during a time of extreme political tension. Shortly afterwards almost the same number of people were killed by a bomb in the main railway station in Bologna.

However the missile theory propagated by the press has now become the accepted version. The circumstantial evidence is strong that military activity against Gaddafi was underway. The only problem is that the hard evidence, investigated by an international technical committee including a Cranfield academic supports a bomb.

It is just conceivable that the evidence was tampered with. However the wreckage seems to have been on the seabed at great depth. In the missile's favor the wreckage was not surprisingly incomplete and the investigation was interfered with and slowed down at every step. In favor of the bomb the overpressure evidence in the aft lavatory according to the experts points towards an internal explosion.

It would be interesting to get a view from a military ordnance expert whether an explosion near the aircraft could cause an overpressure in an enclosed space with vents to the outside (the aft lavatory) but without any other signs of the missile. It seems a bit unlikely. Otherwise that leaves a bomb or falsification of the evidence as possibilities.

[DingerX]

Ustica is an excellent example of how in Italy there are two versions of recent history, each one apparently well documented and between themselves fundamentally irreconcilable.

Well, Ustica actually has a lot more than two versions. I remember when the court determined that it was a MiG going supersonic in close proximity to the jet.

So you've got USN drop tanks in the debris field, a Libyan MiG-23 in the mountains of Calabria, an Italian air force with a high mortality rate to those exposed, including car accidents, suicides and the Ramstein Airshow, Ghaddafi's flight plan through the region (although he flew a different route), and the French showing up on NATO radar recordings (which a court saw fifteen years ago, but never made public, to my knowledge). Add in bombings in Bologna, and you've got enough missiles, shockwaves, bombs and coverups to explain every major transit disaster in Italy clear through to the Costa Concordia.

No one theory is ever going to fit all the "facts". They never do, especially when an event generates "facts" with such regularity as this one. Conspiracy theorists also have a handy epistemology: if it supports their case, it's a known fact; if it goes against their case, it's evidence of a cover-up.

Bomb in the toilet? Probably.

[ORAC]

It would be interesting to get a view from a military ordnance expert whether an explosion near the aircraft could cause an overpressure in an enclosed space with vents to the outside (the aft lavatory) AAM warheads have a very small explosive charge which would cause no damage.

The charge is used is used as either the core of a fragmentation warhead which would leave multiple puncture holes, or to expand a continuous rod.

Think of a continuous rod as like a bicycle chain which expands outwards like a circular saw. it's designed to cut through and sever the wing or fuselage of the target maximising the chances of disabling an essential component.

http://www.okieboat.com/Copyright%20images/CR%20warhead%20exploding%201024%20C.jpg

[Stubenfliege 2]

Hi ya.

I have read the report of Mr. Taylor (a fine piece of investigation, of course), but there are several issues, which I didn´t understand:

The Radar returns: There were three radar returns to the west of the flight path of the Itavia 870. According to the supporter of "missile" theory, these returns prove the presence of an another aircraft in the area.
My question is: How could these returns be explained, esp. the two ones far out to the west?

The time fuse: The flight had two hours delay. If the bomb was triggered only by a time fuse, the bomb has to gone up when the aircraft was still on the ground in Bologna?

The suspects: One of the main suspects for the plantation of the bomb in the Itavia DC9 was the right wing group NAR, which was also the main suspects for the terrorist attack on the main station of Bologna four weeks later.

Were there any members of this group which were tried for the "Strage di Ustica" by the Italian justice?
Are there other suspects for the terror attack on the Itavia jet beside the vague statement "must be the facists"?


Explosive fragments: There were media reports here in Germany, that traces of explosives were found in the corpses of victims, which pointed to an explosion of a missile. In accordance to the italian version of the Wikipedia article, there are traces of "T4" and "TNT" explosives.

Are these kinds of explosives are in use in AAR missiles?
Were maybe the same explosives used in the attacks on the main station in Bologna?


The dogfight: Important part of the missile theory is the presence of one or more libyan Mig-23 fight jet´s in the area. Is the operational range of Mig23 loaded with missiles sufficient to come from Libya to the area north of Sicily, do some dog fighting and then have the change to reach their homebase?

The legal verdicts: Based on what evidence ruled the court in Palermo & another criminal court in January that the Italian goverment is guilty of the failure to "protect the flight" and has to pay compensation?

Thanks in advance,

Stubenfliege

[WHBM]

How would you get a bomb on board a charter jet anyway?
It would have to be placed there by ground crew. Which unless they were targeting specific people on board that charter, it makes no sense.
As said before, why not go for the national carrier.
It was not a charter. Itavia were a longstanding domestic scheduled service operator in Italy, with a substantial jet network.