Airplane accidents: Waiting for explanations (August 1996)
Soon after the disaster that struck TWA flight 800, the criticism of the speed with which the investigations were being conducted was abundantly manifest. Not only were Americans highly critical of the way the operations were being run, but the Europeans had gripes of their own. When the French government offered the assistance of one of their many navy vessels in the area, they felt snubbed when the U.S. government refused. And the Italians inferred that nothing would be said about the origin of the accident until the Atlanta games were over in order to avoid discouraging attendance at the Olympics due to the possible threat of terrorism.
As offensive as it is to hear, this kind of reproach which often comes forward from our allies has to be taken in stride. Even though the efficiency of the Americans in "getting the job done" is often called upon by our partners, it is also true that they tend to resent our competency and take any opportunity to reprove us when they can. Typical behavior of the envious. Not the kind of attitude one expects of world governments, but after all, governments are only people.
One Italian man took the occasion to remember the victims of another tragic airplane accident. Although he said he didn’t want to minimize the grief of the families of the victims of the TWA crash, he reminded the Italian authorities that the families of the victims of the "Caso Ustica" were still waiting to understand why their loved ones had lost their lives in another fateful accident. Most Americans have heard little of this case. In Italy, it has been the cause of yet another on-going scandal for the past sixteen years.
On June 27, 1980 an Italian domestic flight from Bologna to Palermo, an Itavia DC-9, exploded in the skies over the sea of Ustica killing 77 passengers and 4 crew members. Since then, the reports that followed the numerous investigations have evolved around three hypothesis: a structural defect of the vehicle, the explosion of a bomb from inside the aircraft, and a missile attack.
The first, which has since been excluded, cost the owner of the Itavia airline company, Aldo Davanzali, more than his business which was forced to close. When he advanced the theory that the DC-9 may have been prey to a missile attack at a meeting of an investigative committee of 22 senators, he was incriminated for spreading false information.
In July 1980, the investigating judge, Giorgio Santacroce called upon the services of the American expert, John Macidull. His results, which came the following November, concluded that the cause of the accident was an explosion in flight several seconds after the approach of a very small and fast aircraft.
Not until September 1986 did Prime Minister Bettino Craxi allocate the funds necessary for a French company to recover the remains of the DC-9 which were still at the bottom of the sea, sixty miles north of the island of Ustica to the north of Sicily. By May 1988, a submarine had finally brought to the surface two-thirds of the relic along with the two black boxes. And in March 1994, the bomb theory was finally excluded after chemical tests revealed the presence of traces of T4 and TNT, typical of military explosives.
Circumstantial evidence had led many to believe in the missile hypothesis long before this scientific evidence would prove their postulations to be justified. There are two factors which would implicated American and/or Libyan involvement.
On the night of the accident Libyan ruler Colonel Qaddafi was supposed to be flying over the sea area in question on route to Warsaw. He had received permission from the Italian authorities to fly over Italian air space in that part of the Mediterranean. Apparently, Qaddafi changed his flight plans at the last minute and flew over Malta instead, without advising the Italian authorities of the change. It is around this presumption of the presence of Qaddafi in the skies over Ustica and the particular state of tension between the United States and the Libyan regime at that time, that the theory of American involvement was born. Three Italian military recordings mentioned the presence of a Phantom in flight in the same zone as the DC-9. They also allude to several F-104s which took off in order to intercept the Phantom. On these recordings reference is also made to the U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga which was supposed to be anchored in the port of Naples, but which wasn’t there that night. Although the United States eventually admitted to having conducted a drill that night, they insisted that it had been a simulated drill in the port.
The second missile theory concentrates on Libyan involvement. On July 18, 1980, 21 days after the tragic fall of the Itavia flight, a MiG 23 belonging to the Libyan air force was found in the Sila mountains in Calabria. Although the news was given as if the crash of the Libyan plane had just occurred, the autopsy performed on the corpse of the pilot revealed that he had died several weeks earlier. The most likely hypothesis of all is that the DC-9 was attacked by the MiG, or that a missile that was meant to hit the MiG struck the DC-9 instead.
And the mystery goes on. No concrete answer has been forthcoming.
As far as the criticism regarding the expediency of the investigations being conducted in New York is concerned, it must be recognized that it took the American authorities less than a month to recover most of the remains of the TWA plane as opposed to the 8 years it took the Italians to recover the Itavia plane. However, it is evident in the Ustica Case that someone is trying to cover up something. As unpleasant as it is to have to admit, it may indeed be the Americans who have something to hide. Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that in the American version of the Book of Facts under the listing "Aircraft disasters since 1937" the Ustica Case doesn’t even appear in the list?
August 1996
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