You’re returning from a vacation or going to a favorite place. Maybe you wouldn’t believe it if someone told you about the accident that will happen after a while on the plane you boarded without knowing anything about it. However, there have been many examples of this in history, where planes with hundreds of passengers were shot down by rockets. Why do rockets target passenger planes?
This is a major concern for civil aviation, and is consistent with past tragedies. It is an issue that is hoped to not happen again.
closest example We lived in 2020. Scores of people killed in a commercial passenger plane crash There was. These planes, which are shot down for various reasons, create terrible scenes.
Many passenger planes have been shot down in this era. So what was the situation like before the 2000s?
On July 23, 1954 Cathay Pacific Airline A Douglas C-54A type passenger plane, while flying on the Bangkok-Hong Kong route, was attacked by two Lavochkin La-7 type fighter planes belonging to the People’s Republic of China.
A machine gun was fired at the plane. During the attacks, the aircraft lost control and was forced to make a forced landing in the sea. China said a military plane was confused with a passenger plane during an operation related to the incident.
passengers and crew, After landing in the sea, they tried to get on the boats to survive. However, in the meantime, they were targeted by fighter planes and were attacked again. While 10 of the 19 people on the plane lost their lives in this tragic incident, the others survived with injuries.
On July 27, 1955, EL-AL Airlines Flight 402, a Constellation type aircraft flying from London to Vienna and then to Tel Aviv, was shot down by a fighter plane in Bulgarian airspace.
The background of this tragic event is adverse weather conditions and it was recorded that the plane had to enter Bulgarian airspace from a different point. As the EL-AL aircraft approached the western border of Bulgaria, it was subjected to machine gun fire by interceptor aircraft as a warning. In response to this warning, the Israeli plane tried to comply with the rules of interception by heading towards the Bulgarian-Greek border.
But the plane quickly When you start crossing the Greek border, At an altitude of 5,484 km, the fighters opened machine gun fire again and shot down the aircraft in an area close to the Yugoslavia-Greece-Bulgaria border. In this terrible incident, 7 crew members and 51 passengers on the plane lost their lives.
On October 28, 1959, Cuban politician Camilo Cienfuegos was making a night flight in a Cessna-310 aircraft while returning to Cuba from Florida.
After this flight, he was never heard from again. He sent a letter to the leader stating that he resigned from his army duty 1 week ago. He sent it to Fidel Castro. Following the incident, various scenarios and theories were put forward.
One of these was that Cuban Air Force fighters spotted Cienfuegos’ plane as a hostile target. accidentally saw and dropped It was in the direction. However, due to the uncertainties and lack of information at that time, it is still unclear how exactly the incident occurred.
On June 30, 1962, Tupolev Tu-104A type passenger aircraft, Flight 902, belonging to the Soviet Union’s Aeroflot Airline, was hit by a missile while performing a domestic flight between Krasnoyarsk and Voznesenka.
found on the plane While there were no survivors among 84 people, Russian officials initially claimed that the plane crashed as a result of pilot error. However, it was later announced that a missile accidentally fired from the air defense training area caused the plane to crash.
On February 21, 1973, a Boeing 727 type passenger plane with flight number LN-114 belonging to Libyan Arab Airlines was about to go from Tripoli to Benghazi and then to Cairo, when a malfunction occurred in the plane.
Due to malfunction The plane deviated from its route and crashed into the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula.restricted area” began to fly over. Israeli F-4E type fighter planes first tried to prevent this entrance, then opened fire on the plane and shot it down.
The passenger plane deviated approximately 112 km from its route, combined with factors such as high-altitude high winds, a sandstorm on the ground and the failure of its equipment; The captain misjudged the plane’s position and began to descend towards Cairo.
F-4E pilots tried to make eye contact with the plane, but when the Libyan plane turned west again, F-4Es opened machine gun fire. As a result of this attack, malfunctions occurred in the aircraft and the wing structure was damaged. The plane made a crash landing in the Sinai Desert and the right landing gear exploded. Only 5 people out of 104 passengers and 9 crew members survived the accident.
On April 20, 1978, Korean Air Lines B-707 flight number 902 was intercepted by Soviet Union fighter planes during the Paris-Anchorage-Seoul flight.
The plane was damaged during its descent into snowy terrain and its occupants 2 out of 109 people died. Afterwards, the remaining passengers and crew were first detained and then released. While the plane was blocked and forced to land due to the airline’s deviation from the specified route, the pilot accidentally landed on land.
On September 1, 1983, Soviet warplanes launched a missile attack on the Boeing-747 model plane, Flight 007, belonging to Korean Airlines, flying from New York to Seoul, and the plane exploded in the air.
In this tragic incident, a member of the US Congress 269 people died, including Larry MacDonald. Although the Soviet Union initially maintained a denial stance regarding the details and responsibility of the incident, they later admitted that they had targeted the plane for what they claimed were espionage activities.
They claimed that it was the USA that carried out the incident. Officials in South Korea and the USA argued that the reason why the plane violated Soviet airspace was due to the pilot’s unsuccessful use of the air navigation system.
On April 6, 1994, the Falcon-50 model plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira was attacked.
The next day after this terrible incident A horrific genocide began in Rwanda. Experts state that this double assassination led to the start of the Rwandan civil war and the First Congo War. However, there is no clear information about those who carried out this attack.
Traveling from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk on October 4, 2001 Tupolev-154 type passenger aircraftfell into the Black Sea.
The Tupolev-154 type passenger plane, which has a history of accidents, is generally known as the “flying coffin”. US reports state that the plane was targeted by the S-200 missile fired from the Crimean Peninsula. The plane, which took off from Israel, was launched during the exercise. Ukrainian missile It crashed into the Black Sea after being hit, and there were no survivors among the 78 passengers on board.
In the same year, two Malaysian planes were lost, the plane in this accident belonged to the Russian-made Malaysia Airlines.
On July 17, 2014, he was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Boeing 777 type aircraft belonging to Malaysia AirlinesIt crashed as a result of a surface-to-air missile. Unfortunately, 289 people on the plane lost their lives in this attack. Russian and Ukrainian officials made mutual accusations, blaming each other for the attack.
And the most recent example was the Ukrainian passenger plane, which was shot down by 2 missiles in Tehran by the Revolutionary Guard Army on January 8, 2020.
Flight PS752 of Ukraine Airlines, It was shot down shortly after taking off from Imam Hosseini Airport in Tehran on Wednesday night, when Iran retaliated against US bases in Iraq due to the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. It was claimed that the attack, which caused the death of 176 people, was “accidental”.
After remembering all these painful events, there is only one reason for them: selfishness. Yes, we are talking about people who killed thousands of people for reasons they deemed justified, whose only crime was being on that plane. We hope that these events will end as soon as possible and these sad news of humanity will be left behind.
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