[Music] The 1980s was a tumultuous time around the world. Terrorism was at its height airliners were hijacked others blown up with bombs a couple were shot down. American troops were stationed all over the world at various times.
The Iranian Embassy in London had been taken and then secured by the British SAS (see our video on that) the Iran-Iraq war was raging. Terrorists in Lebanon Gaza and the West Bank were plying their trade. Anwar Sadat of Egypt was assassinated.
President Reagan sent troops into Granada and the 8th Marines had been bombed in Beirut. El Salvador and Nicaragua were on fire. The Achille Lauro cruise ship had been hijacked (see our video on that as well) and nerves were afraid.
I your humble narrator served in units that went to Sinai Somalia and other units in the Army and Marine Corps and we were placed in the world's hotpots. The Siani Peninsula was no different. The Multinational Force and Observers were part of the United Nations peacekeeping collective and every 6 months a new battalion from the Army rotated in and out ensuring the peace treaty was secured by the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel.
On December 12th 1985 the 3rd Battalion 502nd infantry 2nd Brigade 101st Airborne Division was returning from a six-month tour on Multinational Force and Observer Duty in the Sinai Peninsula. The troopers were flying back state side on chartered Arrow Air flight 1285R. It would end in tragedy.
What was the Gander incident? What was the controversy? Why were there different stories about what happened?
Was there a cover up? If there was a cover up why? Was it necessary?
Hello I'm Colin Heaton former history professor Army and Marine Corps veteran and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History We in our unit pulled funerals all over the country for several weeks and it was a very solemn time. The 3-502 Battalion Commander was Lieutenant Colonel Marvin A. Jeffcoat whom I met but I also knew Captain Edward John Manion and many of soldiers lost were my first squad leader in the Army Staff Sergeant Jerry W.
Malone as we served together in Germany and my friend Specialist 4James Douglas Phillips Jr who had transferred from duty and South Korea. The aircraft involved in the incident was a 16-year-old Douglas DC-8 registration N95JW which would fly from Cairo to Cologne Gander and then onto Fort Campbell Kentucky. The flight departed Cairo at 2035 hours Greenwich Mean Time and arrived at Cologne at 0121 on 12 December 1985 for a planned technical stop.
A complete crew change took place following which the flight departed for Gander as 0250. The cockpit crew that took over during the crew change in Cologne West Germany were the 45-year-old captain and pilot John Griffin assisted by 45-year-old first officer Joseph Connelly and 48-year-old flight engineer Michael Fowler. The plane landed at Gander Airport in Newfoundland at 0530 Eastern Daylight Time and was refueled for the last leg to Fort Campbell Kentucky.
The passengers left the aircraft to stretch their legs. Some bought Christmas gifts in the airport shops. Many had small children waiting for them to come home as it was Christmas.
At the same time flight engineer Fowler did an external inspection of the plane. Apparently during the downtime Captain Edward Manion called his wife Christine and she said that he was "extremely depressed when he talked to her by telephone" saying the DC-8 appeared "so rickety he worried about the safety of the return trip. " Mr.
Manion said the Arrow aircraft that took her husband's Alpha Company 3rd Battalion to the Sinai Peninsula the last time for duty in July with the international peacekeeping force also appeared "unkempt and overloaded. " At 0645 the plane took off from Runway 22 after clearing the ground. Witnesses say that the aircraft appeared to have difficulty gaining altitude.
People driving along the Trans-Canada Highway about 900 ft from the end of the runway said that they saw the plane "pitch up" as it continued descending. "You see the thing coming come across the front of the truck and there was like a flame on the bottom and it illuminated the cab and just seemed like there was no engine noise so just a rumbling noise. You know two or three seconds after everything blew up.
"There were various eyewitness reports that a bright flash and a flame was seen underneath the aircraft then the plane descended quickly tail first and struck an abandoned building before crashing through the forest and exploding killing all 256 people on board including 248 soldiers. Of the 248 servicemen all but 12 were members of the 3rd Battalion 502nd 101st Airborne. 11 were from other units and one was an agent from the Criminal Investigations Command.
The area was immediately sealed off. During the investigation the Canadian Aviation Safety Board could not determine the sequence of events leading up to the accident. Initially the eyewitness reports were mentioned about the explosion and fire seen from the ground by people.
Three witnesses described a yellow orange glow emanating from the aircraft. Two of the witnesses testified that the glow was bright enough to illuminate the interior of the truck cabs they were driving as the aircraft reached about a thousand feet. On the same day as the crash once it was known the Lebanese Shia terrorist group Islamic Jihad claimed that they had brought the plane down.
The same group was also believed to be behind the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing in which 241 American Marines died. The families of the men had gathered in the large gymnasium which was to be the reception center after the plane landed at nearby Fort Campbell Army Airfield. The division commander Major General Burton Patrick had already been informed as had Department of Defense.
Retired Major General John Herrling at that time the 2nd Brigade commander at the time of the crash said"My big concern was we were having a welcome back ceremony in the 2nd Brigade gym. I believe it was scheduled for 9:30 a. m.
and I had to figure out what I was going to say to those people when I walked into that gymnasium. " Both the Canadian and United States governments quickly dismissed the claim that the terrorist group was responsible for the crash but the word did get out and the media reported it. But why would such a claim be dismissed given the rampant terrorism that had already occurred?
Former CBC reporter Larry Hudson was one of the first reporters on the scene and told journalist Doug Greer what that was like as he recalls, "Bodies were everywhere and when I saw the bodies I thought that's somebody's son or somebody's brother or somebody's husband and uh to zoom in on a face sightless eyes and have it put on TV uh that same day before perhaps those relatives even known knew that they'd been an accident I thought that would be terrible so I deliberately I had bodies in my shots but there were they were they were indistinct and I did a lot of people have asked me there were hundreds of bodies there 256 bodies there why why didn't we see the bodies? Well you know I I just didn't have it in my heart to do it. Maybe I don't know if that's good or bad journalism but that was that was what went through my mind at that time and that's what I decided on.
" The bodies weapons and other materials were recovered. The dead were identified as best as possible and then transferred to Dover Air Force Base for the dignified return. We 101st men were sent there then escorted those caskets to their homes of record to their families for funeral ceremonies.
Full disclosure to our subscribers I was involved with this story during the recovery and return of the deceased. I was on the burial detail for Captain Ed Manion as well as others but we had 248 funerals to handle. However the investigation had controversies.
The Canadian report stated that the plane stalled at a low altitude from which it was unable to recover listing the possible causes a buildup of ice on the wings leading edge and upper surface a loss of thrust from the number four engine an inappropriate speed when taking off aircraft overloaded with people baggage and fuel. Four of the nine members of the CASB investigation did not agree with the majority's findings saying there was no evidence to suggest ice was present. They put forward a theory that an onboard fire may have brought about a catastrophic system failure.
Making matters worse there is photographic evidence of an internal explosion as shown by the images indicating an outward expansion from an explosion or detonation. This was when the conspiracy began. Representative Laurence Smith Democrat of Florida said "FBI agents who went to Gander cooled their heels in a local motel after offering their help to the Canadians who declined it.
The agents went home 36 hours after they arrived when the Canadians informed them terrorism had been ruled out. " The FBI told the house panel that it had "no reason to question the accuracy of the Canadian findings. " But how could that be?
The United States Federal Aviation Administration accepted Canada's findings about the crash in Gander without consulting the chief US investigator who looked into the disaster which emerged in a later Congressional hearing. The conspiracy only deepened. George Seidlein the National Transportation Safety Board's chief on-site investigator in Gander testified that Canadian investigators were wrong in concluding that ice on the wings caused the disaster that killed the plane load of US servicemen.
Seidlein said the weather conditions "simply weren't right for ice to have formed on the wings in sufficient amounts to cause the crash. " Seidlein was not invited to give his views and he did not volunteer them he told the White House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Seidlein said in his opinion quote "The crash occurred because the crew tried to force the DC-8 to climb after takeoff before it had accelerated to a high enough speed," end quote.
Seidlein also rejected the theory that a bomb downed the plane a possibility raised by some Canadian investigators members of Congress and families of the victims. But Seidlein was not on the crash site and did not examine the aircraft aluminum fusesage. He did not read the autopsy reports but he could have had access to that evidence if he were to bring enough interest and be thorough and not towing the party line.
Regardless the US military officials readily accepted Canadian investigators' theory that the charter DC-8 went down seconds after takeoff because of "ice on its wing. s" Witnesses stated this at the House hearing. The official opinion of excessive ice on the wings and human error causing the crash according to a report issued months later by a nine-member panel of the Canadian Aviation experts was challenged.
"Not so" said four members of that same panel in their Minority Report. They attributed that to a possible explosion or series of explosions in the cargo hold. They were on the scene and saw the burnt and bent metal that could not have occurred from a direct impact only an explosive expansion from inside.
The intense fire had melded (joined together) the weapons and other steel objects showing the heat and made positive identification of many of the dead impossible. The final reports dismissed the several eyewitnesses who reported seeing a bright light in the sky a flash under the plane just before the crash. Ironically the initial news reports did include these witness statements but then the next day and thereafter these comments from people interviewed who saw the event were never presented again.
American and Canadian authorities also dismissed the probability that Islamic Jihad which was aligned with Iran had claimed responsibility but there may have been a reason to save face and not disturb the relationship with the Egyptian government. While the aircraft was on the tarmac in Cairo American military personnel performing security were dismissed as the aircraft was fueled loaded and Egyptians were stationed which was not protocol. Why the change?
This fact was raised by representative Robin Tallon Democrat of South Carolina and some families of the victims who believed a terrorist act connected to the Iran Contra scandal might have caused the crash. Tallon asks "How could Canadian investigators so quickly rule out terrorism and the US government readily accept the assertion? " Supporting the skeptics was LT.
. Filotus a Canadian aeronautical engineer who said "I can't explain that. The theory of ice on the wings is preposterous.
" Filotus dissented from the majority findings and attributed the crash to an in flight fire possibly caused by a bomb. He said the evidence was there to prove it. Another factor were the autopsies performed on the remains.
The vast majority had chemical traces in their lungs which could have only come from an onboard fire or resulting explosion because all on board died on impact. They could have only inhaled the gases while they were alive and before impact. This evidence was totally disregarded.
Then the US government doubled down when Nicholas O'Hara Deputy AssistantDdirector for Criminal Investigations at the FBI said in a written testimony "No credible evidence had surfaced" suggesting the plane crash was the result of an act of terrorism . But O'Hara never had access to the evidence or if he did he ignored it. Remember the Canadians did not allow the FBI onto the scene but why?
Representative Tallon also brought up the fact that the pilot who flew the first leg to Cairo for uploading cargo and passengers told the FBI that he "believed the explosion of a bomb may have caused the crash. The pilot said an Egyptian guard assigned to the plane disappeared from his post several times. " "The FBI found very serious allegations but there is no record of what the agency did after it received them" Tallon said.
Tallon wondered whether the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police withheld allegations relating to terrorism from the Canadian panel that looked into the crash. Now this is where it gets really interesting. It was also discovered that Arrow Air a was one of the subcontracting airlines that hauled weapons to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua for Oliver North's secret resupply network.
It operated in 1985 and 1986 during a congressional ban on US military aid to the guerrillas. The timing of the crash was also suspicious as it occurred less than 3 weeks after the Reagan Administration secretly sent a shipment of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and hundreds of small arms and ammunition to Israel. These were inspected by US Army personnel and US Air Force personnel and handed over to the Israelis.
Israel then painted blue Stars of David on the crates so as to not arouse suspicion but they were inadvertently delivered to Iran with those emblems as part of the US effort to free hostages held in Lebanon. The Iranians upon receiving these marked crates were outraged and felt that they had been duped because the missiles weren't the kind they wanted and the Stars of David were an affront to Islam. The controversy over the true cause was never really put to rest.
A US Congressional hearing the TV show Unsolved Mysteries and a book entitled Improbable Cause challenged the icing theory. The investigation was also hampered due to the antiquated data flight recorder. The report noted the older foil type flight data recorder which recorded only air speed altitude heading and vertical acceleration forces was unreliable.
The plane also took off with a non-functioning cockpit area microphone. There were no steps of any of the standard checklists to test the microphone's functionality despite the existence of a button in the cockpit for that sole purpose. The defect went undetected for an indeterminate number of flights leading up to the accident flight and thus the cockpit voice recorder did not record any useful data from the flight deck and crew.
But then another theory crept in when Charles M. Byers wrote letters to Congress dated February 14th and 23rd 1998 stating "There are compelling reasons to believe that this air crash involved a nuclear accident. Within hours of the crash US Army General John Crosby arrived with a Broken Arrow nuclear disaster team and without conducting any formal investigation ordered the area bulldozed over with six feet of soil.
There was a glowing white hot object the size of a large grapefruit that had burned through the plane and through the body of a stewardess. This object continued to glow white hot for 16 hours even after fire hoses were trained on it. This is not chemical behavior.
It is what can only be expected of a sub-critical core of a nuclear bomb whose explosive shell had burned but did not detonate. The presence of this white white hot glowing object is the key to the motive for the bombing. There was also a small group of Special Operations personnel who boarded the plane at the last minute.
The sources found to be reliable told me that these personnel smuggled a nuclear backpack bomb aboard in Cairo because they had discovered the true nature of their recently cancelled hostage rescue mission. Their mission included surreptitiously transporting and detonating a small man portable nuclear backpack bomb at an Iraqi nuclear weapons development facility to make it seem like an Iraqi nuclear accident. This mission seems to have been under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North who frequently utilized Arrow Air to smuggle arms and other contraband in conjunction with the Iran Contra operation.
The soldiers were not told that they would not have the chance to outrun the blast that would destroy them. Thank God it is the duty of every soldier to disobey an unlawful order or the world would have seen its third intentional tactical nuclear detonation and the mass destruction of innocent lives by a nuclear bomb. Orders were given by US Government personnel that this plane be destroyed before it reached the United States of America.
A bomb was planted during a stop at Gander and remotely detonated shortly after the landing gear retracted upon takeoff. Enclosed color photos of the downed Gander plane show internal damage from an explosive. The blast holes are clearly seen from the inside to the outside.
I have since been informed that there was completely new water system installed in Gander courtesy of the US taxpayers. Was this because of nuclear contamination from the crash? Three weeks after this disaster Arleigh McCree head of the LAPD bomb squad and a professional friend of mine was visiting with me in Phoenix and examining items in our museum.
This was where we kept samples of all of the different special ordinance devices that we had produced over the previous 20-some years. When Sergeant McCree saw one of these items he excitedly proclaimed that it was the device that blew up a plane. He said he would need to get federal clearance to discuss this in more detail with me.
He did not reveal the exact plane at the time. Just four weeks later Arleigh McCree and his partner were killed disarming a pipe bomb that was booby trapped. You will see from the enclosed article on this tragedy that these two deaths were also very unusual.
In fact these are the only two members of the LAPD bomb squad to ever die this way. " Continuing with Byer's letter "In mid January 1986 Sergeant McCree met with Charles M. buyers the president of Accuracy Systems in Phoenix Arizona.
During the course of this meeting Sergeant McCree noticed one of accuracy's special ordinance devices in their product museum. Apparently this device was what Sergeant McCree had had just determined was used to blow up Arrow Air DC-8 at Gander Newfounland on December 12th 1985. Upon returning home Sergeant McCree made a report of his findings and sent it home to Washington.
Unfortunately the wrong persons became aware of this report and to protect themselves set up Sergeant McCree and his partner to be killed with a booby trapped pipe bomb. In a resulting trial evidence was suppressed to ensure the conviction of the homeowner where the bomb was found in order to protect the perpetrators. For 15 years my company Accuracy Systems Ordinance Corporation provided specialized explosive devices to law enforcement the military Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency.
In my letters to Congressman Goss and Senator Kerry I requested full hearings before their committees. These three photographs are of an identical model with the electronic timer used to detonate the bomb which blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland on December 21st 1988. A one inch square partial section of this timer was found in the Pan Am 103 wreckage.
It is adjustable from 0 to 99 minutes or 0 to 99 hours with the flip of a switch. It is a high quality professionally assembled timer whose design includes both circuit hookup connection and output function activation test lights. I know where it was manufactured in Florida again exclusively for the CIA!
" The main Final Report is 95 pages long and detailed with witness statements forensic and autopsy reports while ironically the Minority Report is only 14 pages long. The main report has overwhelming supporting evidence produced by the 31 investigators working on the crash for three years. The Minority Report of the other hand consists of multiple hypotheses supported solely by witness statements and improbable claims with very little supporting evidence that were deemed unreliable and dismissed by experienced investigators the same investigators who either never saw or ignored the evidence located in the 95-page report.
The television documentary series "Matday" featured Flight 1285R crash and investigation in a season 11 episode titled "Split Decision" which included interviews with accident investigators and a dramatic recreation of the event. The TV series "Unsolved Mysteries" starring the late Robert Stack also covered the crash and it at least questioned the official narrative. I will let you the viewer decide what you think caused the crash.
As for me personally these people were murdered. It fails to make sense that soldiers were carrying a man packed portable nuclear device on board just to commit suicide. In my opinion the Egyptians handling tarmac security who walked off is suspect.
Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility is suspect and their track record of terror makes the most sense. People have said they follow the science. Well look at the physical evidence on the fuselage the autopsy reports eyewitness accounts and the covering up of the crash site with bulldozers within a few days of the crash violating the integrity of the crash investigation and crime scene.
Then come to your own conclusions. To this day it remains the deadliest air accident to ever occur in Canada. Today there are memorials to the 256 victims of the crash at Gander Lake and Fort Campbell Kentucky.
I was there once when I went back for a visit and I saw the names of the men I serveed with. It is quite moving. Thank you for watching this episode of Forgotten History.
If you liked what you saw please click like share and subscribe and if you would like to assist with the ever increasing cost of production please consider becoming a channel member and joining our Patreon [Music] page. Please check out our merchandise store and thanks for watching.
