Again, Death on "Flight SAM-7"

But this time, there is more despair than defiance

The Rhodesian resort area near Kariba Lake, close to the Zambian frontier, once seemed far removed from the cruel realities of the guerrilla conflict that has taken the lives of 12,000 black and white Rhodesians over the past six years. But last September, in one of the war's grislier episodes, an Air Rhodesia plane on a flight out of Kariba airport to Salisbury was shot down by guerrillas using a Soviet-made SAM7 heat-seeking missile. Ten of the 18 survivors were then murdered on the ground. Last week death again struck Kariba holidayers.

Winding up a pleasant weekend of fishing, sunbathing and gambling, 86 passengers, including some blacks, filed aboard two four-engine Air Rhodesia Viscount turboprops for the 40-minute return flight to Salisbury. Six minutes after takeoff, the pilot of the first Viscount radioed a Mayday signal; then Flight RH-827, his plane, hit by at least one ground-to-air missile, plunged nose-first into a rocky ravine. The crash killed all 59 people on board. The second Viscount, with Defense Chief Lieut. General Peter Walls and his wife aboard, took off 15 minutes later. It immediately began to execute maneuvers designed to evade missiles and safely reached Salisbury.

The downed Viscount crashed on the desolate Vuti African Purchase Tract, an area heavily infiltrated by black nationalist guerrillas. The airliner fell only 32 miles from the site where the other plane from Kariba crashed in September. Joshua Nkomo, the Zambia-based co-leader of the Patriotic Front guerrillas, claimed his forces had downed that plane while denying responsibility for the subsequent massacre; he maintained that the craft had been carrying military equipment. Nkomo's excuse last week was similar. He acknowledged that "if the plane was fired on, it can only have been our chaps." Alas, he said, his guerrillas hit the wrong aircraft: they had intended to kill Walls and had reason to believe he was on the first plane. So, Nkomo insisted, it was Walls who was "responsible for the deaths of all these other people because he is the biggest military target."

If Nkomo's logic seemed odd, the moral that Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith drew from the episode was only a bit less strained. He charged that the U.S. and Britain were in part responsible for the RH-827 tragedy because they encouraged terrorism by their failure to support the Smith-led government. The reaction of Co-Minister of Transport James Chikerema, a former guerrilla leader, was more straightforward. Said he: "It is a tragedy so serious that if it is established again that Nkomo's people did it, Nkomo should not weep if we retaliate."

After last September's incident, government troops raided guerrilla bases across the border in Zambia, killing some 1,500 people who they claimed were guerrillas and who Nkomo claimed were mostly innocent civilians. This time the Rhodesian reaction was equally swift: Rhodesian jets whistled down on several guerrilla bases in southern Zambia, bombing and rocketing the primitive rural camps. Rhodesia termed the raids successful, but what effect they will have on the war is another matter. The Patriotic Front forces of Nkomo and Robert Mugabe are now in control of large areas of the Rhodesian bush. Besides reserve forces in neighboring countries, the Patriotic Front has an estimated 12,000 guerrillas inside Rhodesia, which is just about as many men as the Salisbury government has on active duty. Fully 90% of Rhodesia is now under some form of martial law.

The attack on RH-827 was yet another indication of the guerrillas' growing strength and further proof that Nkomo seems determined to raise as much havoc as he can before the spring election. Late in January, Rhodesia's white minority overwhelmingly approved a referendum committing them to join 2.8 million black voters at the polls on April 20 to elect a majority-rule government that Smith hopes will gain international recognition as legitimate.

Although the Viscount crash increased white Rhodesians' defiance, it also deepened their feeling of encirclement. Joking references to the Kariba-Salisbury air route as "Flight SAM-7" that were voiced in Salisbury after September's attack were not repeated last week. Indeed, whites' feelings of vulnerability were further heightened by the experience of the Viscount sent out to survey the RH-827 crash site. Flying low to reduce the risk of being hit by a missile, the pilot felt a slight jar and thought the plane had struck a bird. After it landed, five bullet holes were found in the fuselage. qed

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