Philippine Airlines Flight 434

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Philippine Airlines Flight 434
Philippine Airlines Bombing Aftermath-2.png

Interior of the aircraft after the explosion
Accident summary
Accident type Bomb attack
place Minamidaitō, Daitō Islands
date December 11, 1994
Fatalities 1
Survivors 292
Injured 10
Aircraft
Aircraft type Boeing 747-283BM
operator Philippine Airlines
Mark EI-BWF
Departure airport Manila Airport
Stopover Mactan-Cebu Airport
Destination airport Tokyo Narita Airport
Passengers 273
crew 20th
Lists of aviation accidents

On 11 December 1994 exploded on board a Boeing 747-200 , referring to the Philippine Airlines Flight 434 ( Flight number : PR434 or PAL 434) from Manila via Cebu to Tokyo was a bomb with time fuse . It was smuggled onto the plane by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef , one of the masterminds behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing . He wanted to explode the aircraft tank and thus the machine over the Pacific Ocean. The jet's tank, however, remained undamaged. The passenger under whose seat the bomb exploded was killed. Despite the severely limited maneuverability of the aircraft, the pilots managed to make an emergency landing in Naha , Okinawa Prefecture .

The attack was part of Operation Bojinka . It was a kind of "test demolition", which was to be followed by further aircraft attacks. However, this was prevented by investigators, aided by the terrorists' inadequacies.

Aircraft and process

The Boeing 747 EI-BWF of flight PAL434 from the Boeing SAS series with the special location of the fuel tank (December 1988)

Philippine Airlines Flight 434 was an international scheduled flight from the Philippine capital Manila to Tokyo's Narita Airport with a stopover in Cebu. A Boeing 747-283BM was used on this route. This type of aircraft belongs to the SAS version of the Boeing 747 , which has some differences from the normal version of the jumbo jet. This includes the fact that the central fuel tank in the aircraft fuselage (“center wing tank”) has been moved two rows back.

The Boeing used on flight PAL434 made its maiden flight on February 17, 1979, about 15 years and ten months before the attack, and was delivered to the Swedish airline SAS Scandinavian Airlines on March 22, 1979 with the registration number SE-DFZ . In mid-1983 Nigeria Airways took over the aircraft for four and a half years. The Irish leasing company Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) acquired the machine in the summer of 1988, which gave it the EI-BWF license . Philippine Airlines leased the aircraft from GPA that same year and operated it for six years before the bomb exploded, apart from a five-month deployment between 1991 and 1992 for Aerolíneas Argentinas .

Course of events

Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who brought the bomb on board under the code name Armaldo Forlani

The Pakistani terrorist and bomb maker Ramzi Yousef went to Manila under the Italian cover name Armaldo Forlani with a ticket to Cebu on board Philippine Airlines flight 434. He managed to get the utensils for a bomb on board the plane by using liquid explosives disguised as a contact lens solution, the igniter in a Casio - watch , as well as electronic parts such as a battery in its heel hidden. After launch, Yousef retired to a toilet to put the bomb together. He set the time fuse so that the bomb had to explode four hours after the stopover in Cebu. He hid the finished bomb in the life jacket under his seat 26K in order to detonate the supposedly underlying fuel tank during the flight. During the stopover at Cebu Airport at 6:50 a.m., Yousef got off with 25 other passengers. The aircraft, which had been occupied until then, was filled with 256 new passengers.

At 8:40 am, the plane flown by Captain Eduardo Aranas "Ed" Reyes took off in the direction of Tokyo Narita Airport . Four hours after the assassin left the plane, the bomb exploded in the plane, which was located over the Pacific Ocean near the Daitō Islands . The pilots lost control of the plane, which was leaning to the right. The autopilot equalized the situation, but the controls no longer worked. In the part of the cabin, eleven people sitting near the bomb were injured. The flight attendants provided first aid and tried to prevent panic . The passenger in seat 26K, a 24-year-old Japanese businessman, died a few minutes later from serious injuries and high blood loss caused by the explosion. The other ten, some seriously injured, survived.

Because of the injuries and the failure of important functions due to severed cables, the crew decided to make an emergency landing at Naha Airport , just under 400 kilometers away as the crow flies . However, due to the lack of controls, the aircraft flew past Naha. The master decided to switch off the autopilot, despite the risk of completely losing control of the engine. Both the cross - and the rudder were not functioning, so that the airplane flew straight on. The captain tried to turn around by throttling individual engines and head for Naha. Reyes now gained limited control of the ailerons and the horizontal stabilizer . The machine turned at low speed. To relieve the landing gear and the brakes on landing , 36 tons of fuel were drained. The landing at 12:40 p.m. went without any major problems. The aircraft was badly damaged without a total write-off.

The bomb

The bomb was of the "Mark II" type, in which a new version of nitroglycerin was used as an explosive . In order to smuggle them on board the Boeing 747, Yousef dismantled them into their individual parts. The liquid explosive was disguised as contact lens liquid . As detonators Yousef used a modified Casio - watch . This was only changed so slightly that the assassin could still wear it as a normal watch. Other components of the bomb included glycerine , sulfuric acid , nitrobenzene , silver azide and acetone . A nine-volt battery served as a power source, which he hid in his heel along with other smaller electronic parts .

Investigations

The Japanese authorities began investigating the aircraft accident shortly after landing . They quickly found out that the bomb could have had far worse consequences. The body of the passenger in seat 26K had absorbed the greatest pressure. However, the steel cables of the rudder, elevator and right aileron were jammed. Ramzi Yousef's plan to detonate the fuel tank was thwarted by the fact that the tank of the SAS version Boeing 747-283BM is a few rows behind seat 26K.

After the examination of the crime scene the collected debris, investigators reconstructed the laboratory time fuse and found that it had been transported in a prepared pm; the origin of the seized battery suggested that the perpetrator got on board in Manila .

On January 6, 1995, Yousef attracted attention when he and his childhood friend Abdul Hakim Murad from Kuwait tried to make several bombs in an apartment in Manila. The burning of two chemicals got out of hand. The doorman of the house called the fire brigade and police about the smoke development . The police examined the apartment. In addition to the chemicals, she found evidence of a planned assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II , who was to visit Manila. Murad, who had waited with Yousef away from the house for the smoke to vent and did not notice the police operation, was arrested on his return to the apartment. Yousef escaped unrecognized.

Because of the magnitude of the case, the Philippine police engaged international special police forces . Information came from the FBI that the fugitive was likely Ramzi Yousef. Indications of his perpetrator in the attack on Philippine Airlines Flight 434 were found in the apartment, including several watches of the same type as in the time fuse and several forged passports and ID cards with photos of Yousef. One of them was dated February 26, 1993, the day the World Trade Center was bombed .

Yousef's arrest and conviction

Hidden files on the laptop found in Yousef's apartment revealed that the attack on flight PAL434 was just a "test". At least two other planes were to be blown up, and attacks on twelve US flights over the Pacific were planned, in which around 4,000 people were to be killed. The next attack was supposed to take place on January 21, 1995. Other attacks, code-named Bojinka, were planned at airports in Japan , Hong Kong , Taiwan , Singapore , South Korea , Thailand , Honolulu , San Francisco , Los Angeles , New York , Portland and the Philippines . In addition, the terrorists intended to assassinate the then American President Clinton on his trip to Asia and to steer a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley .

Yousef had fled to his homeland, Pakistan. There a reward of two million dollars was offered to him. After being betrayed by an accomplice, he was arrested by a special task force on February 7, 1995 in a hotel room in Islamabad . There were flight schedules of the airlines Delta Air Lines and American Airlines as well as hidden in toys bombs ensured.

Yousef was extradited to the United States and convicted by a court of the PAL434 bombing, other planned attacks and involvement in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and sentenced to 240 years in prison in ADX Florence Federal Prison. In his final plea , he said among other things:

“Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States Government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. "

“Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. I only support terror that is directed against the American federal government and Israel because you are more than terrorists; you are the ones who invented terrorism and use it every day. "

- Ramzi Ahmed Yousef (1998) :

Aftermath

The heavily damaged aircraft was repaired after the investigation and converted into a Boeing 747-2XBF. It was finally handed over to Polar Air Cargo in 1996, for which it was still in service for over six years. Since April 2006 the machine has belonged to the Greek airline Sky Wings . However, it has not been in operation since August 2007 and has been at the French airport Châteauroux-Center ever since .

The attack on PAL 434 was filmed in 2003 under the direction of Michael Barnes and shown in the sixth episode of the third season of the Canadian television series Mayday - Alarm im Cockpit with the original English title Bomb on Board and the German title Bomb attack on board of PAL 434 . Reconstructed scenes, animations and interviews with the crew, passengers and investigators reported on the preparations, the course of events and the effects of the attack.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 11/12/94 Philippine Airline Bombing. Kukui Roadhouse . Collected short messages on PAL 434, archived from the original on December 17, 2007 ; accessed on December 23, 2010 (English).
  2. ↑ a b Sky Express Greece SX-FIN (Boeing 747 - MSN 21575) (Ex EI-BWF LX-OCV N921FT). airfleets.net, accessed December 23, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Flightlog of B747 21575. airfleets.com, accessed on December 23, 2010 (English).
  4. ↑ a b c d Avner Falk: Case studies . In: Islamic terror: conscious and unconscious motives . ABC-CLIO, 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-35764-0 , p. 199 (English).
  5. ^ Peter Lance: Cover Up: What the Government Is Still Hiding about the War on Terror . With an overview of the pseudonyms of Ramzi Yousef . HarperCollins , 2004, ISBN 978-0-06-079511-5 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Sam Pender: Saddam's Ties to Al Queda . Virtualbookworm, 2005, ISBN 978-1-58939-684-5 , pp. 53 (English).
  7. ↑ a b c d e Simon Reeve: The Bojinka Plot . In: The new jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the future of terrorism . UPNE, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55553-509-4 , pp. 79 (English).
  8. ↑ a b c d e f John Lumpkin: Yousef bombs Philippines Airlines Flight 434. GlobalSecurity.org, accessed on December 13, 2009 (English).
  9. ↑ a b Matthew Brzezinski: Operation Bojinka's bombshell. Toronto Star , Jan. 2, 2002, archived from the original on June 14, 2002 ; accessed on December 23, 2010 (English).
  10. ↑ a b c d Senate Record: Tribute To Captain Eduardo Reyes. Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 29, February 15, 2007, accessed December 21, 2013 .
  11. ↑ Simon Reeve: The Bojinka Plot . In: The new jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the future of terrorism . UPNE, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55553-509-4 , pp. 80 (English).
  12. ^ Charles Wallace: Web of terrorism targeted US jets . In: Toronto Star . May 28, 1995.
  13. ^ A b c Brian Jenkins: Terrorism trial begins in New York. CNN , May 13, 1996, accessed December 23, 2010 .
  14. ↑ a b c Harvey W. Kushner: Yousef, Ramzi Ahmed (1968–) . In: Encyclopedia of Terrorism . SAGE, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7619-2408-1 , pp. 416 .
  15. ^ Avner Falk: Case studies . In: Islamic terror: conscious and unconscious motives . ABC-CLIO, 2008, ISBN 978-0-313-35764-0 , p. 200 (English).
  16. ↑ Steven Strasser (Ed.): The 9/11 Investigations. Excerpts from the House-Senate Joint Inquiry Response on 9/11 . 2004, p. 443 .
  17. ^ Peg Tire: 'Proud terrorist' gets life for Trade Center bombing. CNN , January 8, 1998, accessed December 13, 2009 .
  18. ↑ Excerpts From Statements in Court. The New York Times , January 9, 1998, accessed January 27, 2010 .
  19. ^ Two Minutes' til Midnight: A Prophecy Fulfilled. DateJesus.com, August 1, 2002, accessed December 23, 2010 .
  20. ^ "Mayday" Bomb on Board (TV episode). Internet Movie Database , accessed December 23, 2010 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 27, 2010 .