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Apartheid and the Helderberg Air Disaster | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:30
Speaker 1: My name is jim is Stif The Battle of Ideas.
0:36
Speaker 2: My background. I spent the last forty three years as
0:41
Speaker 2: a practicing private forensic scientist. I started the first private
0:47
Speaker 2: forensic laboratory in South Africa and I did work for
0:52
Speaker 2: anybody who came along. I did not have preferred clients,
0:58
Speaker 2: and quite early on in my career I was approached
1:04
Speaker 2: by the attorneys acting for Boeing to assist in the
1:12
Speaker 2: inquest which was taking place regarding the loss of the Helderberg.
1:17
Speaker 2: That in quest took place in the Johannesburg High Court
1:21
Speaker 2: and under the chairmanship of Cecil Margo, and I was approached,
1:28
Speaker 2: as I say, to advise Boeing on whether the measurement
1:34
Speaker 2: of common monoxide in the bodies recovered was accurate or not.
1:40
Speaker 2: And in fact the problem with that was that they
1:43
Speaker 2: never were able to get pure blood. They got blood
1:46
Speaker 2: mixed with seawater and you can't do combon monoxide levels
1:52
Speaker 2: on such contaminated samples. And as far as I knew,
1:56
Speaker 2: that was the last of my involvement with the Helderberg
1:59
Speaker 2: until a fellow called Norman Chandler, working for the Saturday Star,
2:04
Speaker 2: started publishing a number of sensational articles about the loss
2:08
Speaker 2: of the Helderberg and making a number of claims. And
2:12
Speaker 2: the next thing we heard was that the newspaper was
2:16
Speaker 2: being taken before the Press Council and was going to
2:22
Speaker 2: be panel beaten over these columns that had been written
2:27
Speaker 2: by by Norman. I then got a phone call from
2:32
Speaker 2: a man by the name of Peter Reynolds, who headed
2:35
Speaker 2: up I think the film was weber Wensel. I can't
2:38
Speaker 2: be sure that it's thirty years ago. Weber Wenzel who
2:44
Speaker 2: asked me to investigate the Hildeberg and basically gave me
2:47
Speaker 2: cote blanche to try and understand what had happened to Heldeberg.
2:53
Speaker 2: And what I did was I got every available piece
2:56
Speaker 2: of type record relating to the Elderberg, including the transcript
3:02
Speaker 2: of the of the of the court hearing of the inquest.
3:07
Speaker 2: It acted both as an inquest and as a court
3:12
Speaker 2: hearing and an inquiry in other words. And I got
3:21
Speaker 2: that record and I started reading it from page to
3:24
Speaker 2: from cover to cover, and on page fifty five of
3:28
Speaker 2: that record, so early on in the record, I came
3:32
Speaker 2: across some something which I considered to be the smoking gun,
3:37
Speaker 2: and it went as follows, you know how an inquest
3:42
Speaker 2: works is that there is a prosecutor who leads the evidence,
3:47
Speaker 2: and there's a sitting judge who hears the evidence. In
3:50
Speaker 2: this case, Margot had a panel of several others with them,
3:54
Speaker 2: and then every party involved in the in the proceedings
3:58
Speaker 2: is allowed to cross examine the the the witnesses or
4:03
Speaker 2: the evidence that is that is laid before the inquest.
4:07
Speaker 2: And in this particular instance, I said, was on the
4:10
Speaker 2: first day of the of the of the inquest, the
4:14
Speaker 2: prosecutor leading the evidence got up and said to Margo
4:17
Speaker 2: the following he said, my lord, Captain deutoyn I remember
4:21
Speaker 2: that name, Captain de Troy. Captain Toy has omitted to
4:25
Speaker 2: introduce himself and would like the opportunity to do so.
4:30
Speaker 2: And unbeknown to the prosecutor, Captain to Toy wasn't there.
4:35
Speaker 2: But in the interim while while this question asked so
4:38
Speaker 2: Margo said, yes, go ahead, a man jumped up whose
4:41
Speaker 2: name was Tony fall yun and Tony for June introduced himself.
4:47
Speaker 2: He wasn't Captain de Toy, but he thought he would
4:49
Speaker 2: introduce himself anyway, and he said, I'm I am Captain
4:53
Speaker 2: for June and I head up ifalper the International Federation
4:56
Speaker 2: of Airline Pilots Associations. So Margo said, Margo said the
5:01
Speaker 2: following to him, welcome, do you have any objection to
5:06
Speaker 2: us reading we're about to hear an extract of the
5:09
Speaker 2: cockpit voice recorder? And now look at that word, We're
5:13
Speaker 2: about an extract of the cockpit voice recorder? Do you
5:16
Speaker 2: have any objections? Now, that's a peculiar situation. Firstly, Margo
5:21
Speaker 2: has already decided that it will be an extract and
5:24
Speaker 2: not the full cockpit voice recorder. Secondly, soliciting an objection
5:29
Speaker 2: is not for the judge to do. If anybody wants
5:32
Speaker 2: to object, they're free to do so, but soliciting it
5:35
Speaker 2: is a bit odd. So for Lune was unaware that
5:38
Speaker 2: he was supposed to object, and he said, no, I've
5:40
Speaker 2: got no objections. So Margo then says to him, well,
5:44
Speaker 2: do you mean to say that the entire cockpit voice
5:47
Speaker 2: recorder can be played in open court because you're making
5:49
Speaker 2: no objections? And for Lune said, yeah, right, that's fine.
5:55
Speaker 2: So Margo said, well, I don't want to force you
5:57
Speaker 2: into an objection that you don't want to make, but
5:59
Speaker 2: I'm I'm going to take the point that only the
6:02
Speaker 2: last few minutes twenty minutes or so be played in
6:05
Speaker 2: open court. Now, that's bizarre, okay. And there are many
6:10
Speaker 2: people who said that you don't want to talk about
6:13
Speaker 2: the whole cockpit voice recorder because unless things in there
6:16
Speaker 2: which are relevant to the inquiry, you don't want you
6:20
Speaker 2: don't want to talk about the whole thing. But that's
6:22
Speaker 2: not true.
6:23
Speaker 1: Just quickly, before you continued David, before we get into
6:27
Speaker 1: the weeds, let's just create the context for those who
6:30
Speaker 1: don't know the Helderberg. I mean, it was a nineteen
6:33
Speaker 1: eighty seven air crash, and it's widely considered to be
6:36
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting air disasters of all time.
6:39
Speaker 1: Which just quick you take me through the context and
6:41
Speaker 1: why it matters.
6:44
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, is the Heldeberg was a Bowing seven forty seven,
6:49
Speaker 2: and it was an unusual configuration at the time since
6:53
Speaker 2: since this continued to coombe, which meant that it carried
6:55
Speaker 2: passengers and freight on the upper deck. So there was
6:59
Speaker 2: a there was a partition between the passenger section and
7:02
Speaker 2: the freight section which you could enter through a door
7:05
Speaker 2: and you could get into the back where the freight
7:08
Speaker 2: was stored in palettes. Now it was flying the route
7:13
Speaker 2: from Johannesburg to TYPEI, and this was the return route
7:17
Speaker 2: from TYPEI, And the net result of all of that
7:22
Speaker 2: was that it was on the way back from TYPEI
7:28
Speaker 2: when at some stage in the proceedings the air traffic
7:34
Speaker 2: control was notified that they had a fire problem on board.
7:39
Speaker 2: And this becomes a very disputed point as to what
7:42
Speaker 2: when that was, when that time period happened. And that's
7:46
Speaker 2: why the cockpit voice recorder is so absolutely crucial and.
7:50
Speaker 1: So and just and just so that people know the
7:52
Speaker 1: plane crashed just outside of Mauritius and this was yeah,
7:56
Speaker 1: and this was during the apartheid regime, and this this
7:58
Speaker 1: matter is also correct.
8:00
Speaker 2: It crashed into the ocean about one hundred and sixty
8:05
Speaker 2: miles northeast of Mauritius nautical miles, and having been in
8:10
Speaker 2: contact with the Mauritian air traffic control, it suddenly went
8:15
Speaker 2: off radar, off screen, off everything forever. And what then
8:21
Speaker 2: happened was South Africa decided after that crash to launch
8:26
Speaker 2: a search for the Helderberg, which was in a particularly deep,
8:29
Speaker 2: deepest search ever ever attempted.
8:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's deeper than the Titanic.
8:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, very deep and very requite a lot of new
8:38
Speaker 2: technology and what have you, and very expensive, and I'll
8:41
Speaker 2: return to that in a minute as well. But the
8:47
Speaker 2: Heldeberg resulted in the loss of life of everybody on board,
8:53
Speaker 2: and they only recovered a few bodies. May I think
8:55
Speaker 2: there were about twelve bodies that were recovered and were
8:58
Speaker 2: post mortemed in Mauritia. And the net result of all
9:03
Speaker 2: of that was that this led in due course to
9:06
Speaker 2: this inquest that I'm talking about now. This was a
9:10
Speaker 2: time in South Africa when we were the pariah state
9:14
Speaker 2: and we had to fly around the bulge because we
9:16
Speaker 2: had no access to the airspace over African countries, and
9:21
Speaker 2: the net result of that was that we had very
9:25
Speaker 2: long routes that we flew and South African Airways had
9:30
Speaker 2: a system on board the aircraft whereby they could contact
9:35
Speaker 2: by means of shortwave radio a station called ZUAR which
9:40
Speaker 2: was back at the then Jansmats Airport, and there was
9:43
Speaker 2: a twenty four to seven operation and every second of
9:47
Speaker 2: that conversation between the aircraft and the the jan Smuts
9:55
Speaker 2: airport was recorded on large tapes, on two tape records,
10:00
Speaker 2: and as one got within fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of
10:03
Speaker 2: the end, the next one took over, so there was
10:05
Speaker 2: never a gap in between. So every conversation on board
10:08
Speaker 2: that aircraft was tape recorded for posterity. Right now, what
10:15
Speaker 2: then happened was, as I say, I now got involved
10:20
Speaker 2: at a later stage investigating what happened to the Helderberg,
10:24
Speaker 2: and having seen the smoking gun, I smelt a rat
10:27
Speaker 2: immediately because Margo wanted to keep out from the inquest
10:32
Speaker 2: parts of that cockpit voice recorder. Now, generally men when
10:38
Speaker 2: they're on their own talk about salary, sex and superiority
10:42
Speaker 2: and things of that nature. This is no you know.
10:45
Speaker 2: I mean, if they didn't do that, their wives would
10:47
Speaker 2: think they were a bit strange. And there was nothing
10:51
Speaker 2: particular to hide on the first part of the tape recorder,
10:54
Speaker 2: according to Margo. But that's not true because I then
11:00
Speaker 2: tried to get hold of the full cockpit voice recording,
11:04
Speaker 2: and it became incredibly difficult. Nobody would part with it
11:10
Speaker 2: until eventually somebody with a conscience at Essay who was
11:14
Speaker 2: manager of technical services, allowed me to come and listen
11:18
Speaker 2: to it, and he wouldn't let me make a copy
11:21
Speaker 2: of it. So although they wouldn't let he wouldn't give
11:27
Speaker 2: me a copy. But what he did was he put
11:30
Speaker 2: me down in front of the tape recorder and he
11:34
Speaker 2: deliberately left the room. And I took that as an invitation,
11:38
Speaker 2: and so I switched on my portable tape recorder and
11:41
Speaker 2: copied it. And the key thing, the key thing in
11:44
Speaker 2: that tape recording was the following part of the conversation.
11:48
Speaker 2: There's a discussion in the cockpit which goes more or
11:52
Speaker 2: less as follows. This guy is getting hungry. Now I
11:55
Speaker 2: wish we'd get out dinner. Focus on dinner, says Oh,
12:01
Speaker 2: what is Joe got? He's got the same old say
12:03
Speaker 2: junk food. So there's clearly a conversation going on in
12:07
Speaker 2: the cockpit, and during the middle of that conversation, you
12:12
Speaker 2: can hear the fire bell go off. Now that's crucial
12:16
Speaker 2: because on every long distance flight I've ever been on,
12:20
Speaker 2: and that is no different to any other, that fire
12:25
Speaker 2: The dinner is served to the cockpit crew at the
12:29
Speaker 2: same time as it's served to the first to us
12:31
Speaker 2: passengers from the same galley, and they normally come on
12:36
Speaker 2: board the aircraft and they're hungry for that evening flight,
12:40
Speaker 2: so they're quite happy to have their dinner. They're not
12:42
Speaker 2: going to wait until eight hours later when the food
12:44
Speaker 2: is all dried out to eat their dinner. So the
12:49
Speaker 2: fire alarm goes in the middle of the dinner conversation,
12:53
Speaker 2: and that places a time frame on the fire alarm
13:00
Speaker 2: right now. Obviously, when you are in the air and
13:06
Speaker 2: you have a fire, it's the worst possible thing it
13:08
Speaker 2: can happen to you. And the net result of all
13:12
Speaker 2: of that was there was obviously a lot of scurrying around,
13:14
Speaker 2: and I think they managed to get that fire out.
13:18
Speaker 2: And as a net result of.
13:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just stopped there. So I just for comparison,
13:23
Speaker 1: there is a video that I know you and I
13:25
Speaker 1: have seen, we've spoken about by a gentleman the name
13:28
Speaker 1: of mentor Pilot. For those who have seen his video,
13:33
Speaker 1: he does get a bunch of things wrong.
13:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he doesn't talk about the first fire, okay,
13:41
Speaker 2: And and what do you do when you Firstly, the
13:45
Speaker 2: pilot was a fellow called Darvy Ace, and darvy Ace
13:49
Speaker 2: would have done what all good pilots would have done
13:52
Speaker 2: in those days. He would have radioed back to the
13:54
Speaker 2: control people back at Essay and said, guys, I've got
13:58
Speaker 2: a problem. I've got a fire. I wanted land this
14:00
Speaker 2: aircraft immediately. Now, the moment you have a fire, you land,
14:04
Speaker 2: you put it out obviously, and you land the aircraft
14:07
Speaker 2: at the nearest available.
14:09
Speaker 1: But they were over the ocean.
14:12
Speaker 2: They were within easy flying distance hours to two hours
14:15
Speaker 2: of an whole range of places, India, the Go, Gocia.
14:19
Speaker 1: So there was still okay. So they were sorry for
14:21
Speaker 1: in dropping, but they were quite near to Taiwan.
14:23
Speaker 2: Still, they were still they could have flown back to Taiwan.
14:28
Speaker 2: Now he was told, and this has become a very
14:32
Speaker 2: disputed partner. I've received a lot of criticism for my
14:35
Speaker 2: comments that I'm going to make now he was told
14:38
Speaker 2: to fly on, and a number of people took grave
14:42
Speaker 2: exception to that, saying nobody could force a pilot to
14:45
Speaker 2: fly on against the wool in an emergency. The only
14:48
Speaker 2: problem was that ashe knew about the illegal cargo on board,
14:54
Speaker 2: and had he landed in any one of these unfriendly
14:58
Speaker 2: company countries on that Indian Ocean rim, he would have
15:03
Speaker 2: been in deep trouble because they would have looked in
15:05
Speaker 2: the hole find the cause of the fire, and ice
15:09
Speaker 2: would have traded his pilot's chair for his jail cell
15:12
Speaker 2: there and then they would have arrested it. There was a
15:15
Speaker 2: legal cargo which ace knew about, and what was that cargo.
15:21
Speaker 2: South Africa was in the middle of a border war,
15:23
Speaker 2: if you remember correctly, and it was very hotly contested
15:28
Speaker 2: to prevent the Russians coming down into Angola and having
15:34
Speaker 2: a communist country right on our doorstep, as it were,
15:37
Speaker 2: and South Africa, in the way that it's been happening
15:41
Speaker 2: for ever since, has been fighting a proxy war for
15:43
Speaker 2: Britain and America. Britain didn't particularly want a communist country
15:50
Speaker 2: overflowing into South Africa, and America certainly didn't want that.
15:55
Speaker 2: They didn't need that on the doorstep of South Africa,
16:00
Speaker 2: which was quite useful to America at the time. And
16:04
Speaker 2: the net result of all of that was we were
16:06
Speaker 2: fighting this proxy war and South African troops were deep
16:10
Speaker 2: into Angola, and at about that time the new Meg
16:15
Speaker 2: fighters came out. I can't remember which number it was.
16:17
Speaker 2: It was a very high tech new MiG fighter which
16:21
Speaker 2: had superior performance and it began to be clear that
16:26
Speaker 2: it was outperforming the aging fleet of aircraft which the
16:30
Speaker 2: South African Defense Force had, and if I remember correctly.
16:34
Speaker 2: Two of our mirages were shot down. Now, if you
16:39
Speaker 2: lose the air war, you lose the ground war. It's
16:41
Speaker 2: not a good thing to not have air cover when
16:44
Speaker 2: you were fighting far from home. And so there was
16:47
Speaker 2: panic amongst the top echelons of the Defense force. And
16:53
Speaker 2: one of the problems they had was that the rockets,
16:55
Speaker 2: the air to air and surface to air missiles they
16:58
Speaker 2: had air to air missiles in particular, were not being
17:00
Speaker 2: able to deal with the meg problem. So they needed
17:04
Speaker 2: to have a better, faster, smarter, more useful missile, and
17:14
Speaker 2: you can ARMSCRE had a facility in Somerset West and
17:20
Speaker 2: on the on the East coast where these missiles could
17:23
Speaker 2: be more they made that. They made the missiles, and
17:25
Speaker 2: they fueled them, and they made the fuel and they
17:27
Speaker 2: did all of that. They were well able to do that.
17:30
Speaker 2: But making a new fuel is not just an easy
17:33
Speaker 2: thing like just making a new fuel. You've got to
17:37
Speaker 2: test it, and it takes time, and it's got to
17:40
Speaker 2: be you've got to make it, sample, run it, see
17:43
Speaker 2: if it works, see if it doesn't work well. And
17:45
Speaker 2: it's not a simple thing. It's not simply like just
17:48
Speaker 2: putting two and two together and getting three so the
17:53
Speaker 2: net result of all of that was that they needed
17:57
Speaker 2: a fast solution, and they needed it now. And what
18:01
Speaker 2: happened was that probably America CIA, of one of the
18:07
Speaker 2: America's shadow organization, probably under Ronald Reagan, agreed to supply
18:16
Speaker 2: South Africa with a high performance rocket fuel which is
18:20
Speaker 2: made of ammonium perchlorate. And I'll tell you a bit
18:24
Speaker 2: more about ammonium perchloratee. But that fuel was shipped across
18:28
Speaker 2: to TYPEI and was stored at Taypei for a while.
18:34
Speaker 2: And they knew that Taypei had a fairly lax inspection policy.
18:41
Speaker 2: They didn't inspect everything, and they and they certainly were
18:45
Speaker 2: very friendly in South Africa at the time, if you remember.
18:48
Speaker 2: And it sat there until the Heldeberg arrived to pick
18:51
Speaker 2: it up. Now, ammonium perchlorate is an exceptionally dangerous seeing
18:56
Speaker 2: to carry around. It's fine if it's in a rocket,
18:58
Speaker 2: and it's fine if it's in a in a contained
19:01
Speaker 2: form like that, but it is susceptible in its normal
19:06
Speaker 2: form like that to auto ignition. If you drop it,
19:10
Speaker 2: it will ignite it. And the Heldeberg, the Heldeberg had
19:14
Speaker 2: this dangerous material on board and they had left Taipei
19:18
Speaker 2: late that evening. They were delayed by a couple of hours,
19:23
Speaker 2: and the net result of all of that was that
19:27
Speaker 2: they ran into a tropical cyclone of some some very
19:31
Speaker 2: bad weather in the South China Sea and that shook
19:36
Speaker 2: up the cargo and ignited that which would have been
19:40
Speaker 2: within two hours of takeoff, which corresponds to the dinner
19:45
Speaker 2: being served, which corresponds to that tape recording of the
19:48
Speaker 2: cockpit voice recorder.
19:49
Speaker 1: The official story is what.
19:53
Speaker 2: The official story was that a quarter light for some
19:56
Speaker 2: unknown reason, just outside Mauritius and crashed into the ocean,
20:00
Speaker 2: and nobody knows why. Okay, that's what Margot found after
20:07
Speaker 2: an exceptionally after an exceptionally expensive inquest, Margo's conclusion was
20:15
Speaker 2: there was a fire on board which caused the loss
20:17
Speaker 2: of the aircraft. Now I could have told you that
20:19
Speaker 2: before the inquest started, because the captain's first words to
20:24
Speaker 2: Mauritiu's air control air traffic control was this is two
20:28
Speaker 2: nine five. We have a smoke problem. Now there's an
20:32
Speaker 2: English saying where there's smoke is fire, So I didn't
20:36
Speaker 2: need an inquest to tell me that. But what Margo
20:40
Speaker 2: didn't tell everybody was the wider background and context of
20:46
Speaker 2: this whole fire, because if Ace had landed, he would
20:50
Speaker 2: he would have blown the whole thing. South Africa would
20:53
Speaker 2: have been finished in air in world air traffic, they
20:56
Speaker 2: would have been taken out the skies. That's only one thing.
21:00
Speaker 2: And secondly, the people on board that aircraft would have
21:03
Speaker 2: had a significant damages claim against SAA for carrying such cargo.
21:10
Speaker 2: So that it was in South Africa's big interest to
21:13
Speaker 2: make certain that that was never found out whatsoever.
21:16
Speaker 1: And it was in Captain Ace's best interest to continue flying.
21:21
Speaker 2: He had no choice, He had no choice being party
21:24
Speaker 2: to the illegal loading of it and agreeing to take
21:27
Speaker 2: over on he became an accessory and he was not
21:30
Speaker 2: going to get away with that, and he knew that,
21:34
Speaker 2: and that his best gamble was to make Mauritius, which
21:39
Speaker 2: was friendly to us, and make certain that the cargo
21:43
Speaker 2: was properly covered up. And they were due to land
21:45
Speaker 2: at Mauritius. There was a relief crew waiting for them
21:48
Speaker 2: at Mauritius.
21:49
Speaker 1: But not on the main runway if I'm correct, No,
21:53
Speaker 1: it was.
21:54
Speaker 2: The main runway in fact, in fact, there are two
21:57
Speaker 2: runways at Mauritius. There's a longer one and a shorter one,
22:00
Speaker 2: and Ace was confident enough in his discussion with the
22:03
Speaker 2: air traffic control to choose the longer runway, which meant
22:07
Speaker 2: that he felt he had control of the aircraft. Okay,
22:11
Speaker 2: but the point is that he never made it to Mauritius.
22:13
Speaker 2: He disappeared off the radar before he got there. Now,
22:17
Speaker 2: how do I know? How do I know that Ace
22:19
Speaker 2: had communicated with the airport in South Africa. That airport
22:25
Speaker 2: is known as Radio Springbook, not Springbok Radio but Radio
22:28
Speaker 2: Springbok or z you are Zulu uniform Romeo and it
22:36
Speaker 2: has a twenty four hour crew and a tape recording
22:39
Speaker 2: all the time. How do I know he spoke to them.
22:44
Speaker 2: I'll tell you how I know, because there were a
22:46
Speaker 2: number of people who became in the know about that,
22:50
Speaker 2: one of whom was flying the simulator. Captain was flying
22:53
Speaker 2: the simulator and he heard about the crash and he
22:57
Speaker 2: sent somebody over to Zed and was told by the
23:00
Speaker 2: ZUAR staff that there had been an earlier communication where
23:04
Speaker 2: Ash had tried to land and was told to fly
23:06
Speaker 2: on the second one was that there was a fellow
23:12
Speaker 2: who worked at avionics and he went down to chat
23:15
Speaker 2: to his father, and there were fellows Zaid who went
23:21
Speaker 2: down to speech. His father worked at avion X at
23:24
Speaker 2: jan Smuts Airport, and he told his father the same
23:28
Speaker 2: story and was overheard by other people. And I have a
23:30
Speaker 2: statement signed statement to that effect. And then there was
23:34
Speaker 2: a third issue where a man selling airport firefighting equipment
23:40
Speaker 2: overheard the fire chief of the airport telling somebody that
23:45
Speaker 2: they couldn't land because they had that dangerous cargo on
23:48
Speaker 2: board and that that asked to land. So there are
23:51
Speaker 2: three separate confirmations of the fact that there was an
23:56
Speaker 2: earlier request to land and an earlier communication with South
24:01
Speaker 2: African Airways Z you are. And none of these people
24:05
Speaker 2: knew each other, none knew the version. So the three
24:07
Speaker 2: separate confirmations of the fact that there was an earlier
24:11
Speaker 2: fire now that was recorded on Z you are. And
24:17
Speaker 2: one of the duties of Renefferant Sales group at the
24:27
Speaker 2: Civil Aviation Authority was the moment there's such a crash,
24:32
Speaker 2: they descend on the airport and they impound everything of
24:36
Speaker 2: relevance to the inquiry or to the accident. And in
24:41
Speaker 2: this case they waited several weeks before they did that,
24:46
Speaker 2: and by which time when they got there and they
24:48
Speaker 2: impounded the tapes. The tape of the takeoff was there,
24:51
Speaker 2: the tape of the next day was there, but the
24:54
Speaker 2: relevant tape which contained that conversation was missing, the so
24:57
Speaker 2: called missing zu Are tape. Right now, that became of
25:05
Speaker 2: an entrance because at the Margot inquiry Margo made the
25:10
Speaker 2: astounding contrusion it was never cross examined and the people
25:13
Speaker 2: in charge of it were never properly cross examined as
25:16
Speaker 2: to the missing tape. And the net result of all
25:20
Speaker 2: of that was that Margo made the finding of his
25:24
Speaker 2: final report saying it was either overtaped or went missing. Now,
25:30
Speaker 2: I don't know how you actually let a big tape
25:34
Speaker 2: of that side just go missing. It doesn't just it's
25:37
Speaker 2: not as though it's something you have in your pocket
25:39
Speaker 2: which got to the laundry. It's a big tape, and
25:41
Speaker 2: it's usually kept in a locked cabinet. And they are
25:45
Speaker 2: they are they are taped over. They're overtaped only at
25:49
Speaker 2: the end of a thirty one or thirty two day period,
25:52
Speaker 2: and they moved steadily up the line until something it's
25:56
Speaker 2: clear that nothing relevant has happened, and then they get
25:59
Speaker 2: over taped and reused that had not. There was not
26:02
Speaker 2: time for that to have happened. So fast forward a
26:07
Speaker 2: little bit. Well fast forward, let me fast forward you
26:10
Speaker 2: a little bit. At the risk of creating a little conclusion,
26:16
Speaker 2: I went into that tape and one evening, late in
26:20
Speaker 2: the evening, I had an informant at Essay said to me,
26:24
Speaker 2: phone up this pilot called Jimmy Deal. He was He
26:28
Speaker 2: was in the in the in the airport control center
26:34
Speaker 2: at the unsmuts at the time. Phone Jimmy Deal, because
26:38
Speaker 2: you'll find he took the tape out that night, in
26:42
Speaker 2: the early hours of the morning after the crash, he
26:45
Speaker 2: took it out. So I phoned Jimmy Deal. And he
26:48
Speaker 2: had a bit of a cold, if I remember correctly,
26:51
Speaker 2: and I think I caught him a little of God.
26:52
Speaker 2: I said to him, Captain Deal, I'm telling him who
26:55
Speaker 2: I wasn't what I was doing. I said, you took
26:57
Speaker 2: the tape out that night, to know what you did
27:00
Speaker 2: with it? And he blustered a bit until eventually he
27:05
Speaker 2: said to him, I gave it to somebody. I said, well,
27:08
Speaker 2: who did you give it to? Oh can't remember. I said, well,
27:10
Speaker 2: did you give it to the tea lady? No, and
27:14
Speaker 2: then transport. He had given it to Micky Mitchell, who
27:17
Speaker 2: was the chief pilot at SAA and had from a
27:21
Speaker 2: fear at the same time. They had that tape and
27:26
Speaker 2: they never breathed a word about that to the Marlga Commission.
27:29
Speaker 2: So that's where the tape went.
27:33
Speaker 1: They knew what was on it.
27:35
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, they knew exactly what was on it because
27:38
Speaker 2: they'd been involved in the conversation earlier. The crew at
27:42
Speaker 2: at Zendu or radio station would not have had the
27:45
Speaker 2: authority to tell to tell the pilot to fly on,
27:51
Speaker 2: but certainly had they patched that through to Hant Front
27:54
Speaker 2: of Fear or I think it was also probably patched
27:57
Speaker 2: through to pick Werter or somebody senior, somebody senior and
28:02
Speaker 2: the government would have made that decision and they would
28:05
Speaker 2: have said to you fly on, my boy, because if
28:08
Speaker 2: you don't fly on and you get caught, we're going
28:10
Speaker 2: to dump you. We're going to say you were on
28:11
Speaker 2: a frolic of your own.
28:12
Speaker 1: And that's what was on that tape.
28:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they knew what was on the tape. Okay,
28:19
Speaker 2: now that let me fast forward you a little further
28:23
Speaker 2: to that. How do we know what was in the
28:26
Speaker 2: in the what caught fire. When you fly at that
28:30
Speaker 2: altitude thirty thirty thousand feet or more, the temperature outside
28:34
Speaker 2: is not compatible with life. It's round about minus thirty
28:38
Speaker 2: minus forty degrees centigrade. And the skin of the aircraft
28:42
Speaker 2: which was recovered from Mauritius, from outside Mauritius, that was
28:48
Speaker 2: brought to the surface and examined by a fire expert
28:51
Speaker 2: from Dr. J. S. Burgoyne and partners who would have
28:54
Speaker 2: set of fire experts acting for Boeing, and they were
28:59
Speaker 2: able to make the following conclusion. They saw that the
29:03
Speaker 2: paint on the outside was scorched. Now, to scorch that
29:08
Speaker 2: paint on the outside, you require a particularly hot fire.
29:14
Speaker 2: A normal fire, the bry fire that you have, or
29:17
Speaker 2: any packing material fires made of wood, plastic, and it's
29:22
Speaker 2: made of cardboard or whatever. Okay, that fire never reaches
29:27
Speaker 2: temperatures of much more than about nine hundred degrees centigrade.
29:32
Speaker 2: And the reason is that it is limited by the
29:34
Speaker 2: atmosphere in the oxygen. The oxygen in the atmosphere providing
29:39
Speaker 2: you need oxygen for a fire to burn. But if
29:42
Speaker 2: the material burning contains its own oxygen, you can get
29:46
Speaker 2: very very high temperatures. Think of an oxyocetle in flame,
29:50
Speaker 2: where oxygen is injected into their setle in flame and
29:53
Speaker 2: the temperatures go very very high two thousand degrees or more.
29:58
Speaker 2: You can melt and cut metal with it. In this case,
30:02
Speaker 2: the temperatures had to be well above a thousand degrees
30:04
Speaker 2: in order to provide the scorching of the paint on
30:08
Speaker 2: the outside. And those calculations were never challenged by Margo. Ever,
30:15
Speaker 2: so Burgoyne made that fine in Burgoyne was a fellow course.
30:19
Speaker 1: Hold on, why didn't he challenge them?
30:22
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think he had expert evidence
30:25
Speaker 2: in able to do it. Later on, later on a
30:28
Speaker 2: local fire expert and another fire expert, I don't think
30:31
Speaker 2: it was local. But he got up and gave un
30:36
Speaker 2: it was. It was not under oath. He gave evidence
30:39
Speaker 2: from the floor, offering a bit of a challenge to it.
30:43
Speaker 2: But as far as I'm concerned, the Burgoyne report is
30:46
Speaker 2: worth far more than that untested evidence from the floor,
30:50
Speaker 2: and and and Burgoyne was burgoing, was cross examined, South
30:55
Speaker 2: south third was cross examined, And as far as I'm
30:59
Speaker 2: concer and that evident stamp and we know that the
31:02
Speaker 2: skin was scorched, and in fact it's it's quite an
31:05
Speaker 2: interesting little experiment and your listeners can do it. You
31:08
Speaker 2: can take you can take a plastic bag, an ordinary
31:11
Speaker 2: plastic bag that you put in the fridge and if
31:13
Speaker 2: you if you put a light underneath it, it called burn
31:16
Speaker 2: and scorch and and with a crinkle immediately. However, if
31:20
Speaker 2: you fill it with water, you can heat that water
31:22
Speaker 2: over an open flame. It won't because the heat is
31:24
Speaker 2: carried away so quickly by the outside, so it never
31:27
Speaker 2: reaches the melting point of the of the plastic material
31:31
Speaker 2: or of the of the skin of the aircraft. So
31:34
Speaker 2: we know now that that there was something untoward in that,
31:38
Speaker 2: and we know that South Africa needed to get that
31:41
Speaker 2: material over and we know that the authorities knew that
31:45
Speaker 2: it was illegal. And not only that they knew, other
31:48
Speaker 2: people knew. There was the agent in America who knew
31:53
Speaker 2: about the thing. He was he was told to be
31:56
Speaker 2: quiet about it, and he was told show up about it.
32:01
Speaker 2: People told him, you don't talk about this. And somebody
32:05
Speaker 2: had told him that there was this stuff on board.
32:07
Speaker 2: He had to he had to represent s a A
32:10
Speaker 2: in Taipei. He was the agent over there and know
32:13
Speaker 2: and behold, I have I have a statement from him,
32:18
Speaker 2: one of the one of the children born after his
32:20
Speaker 2: father died on the Hildeberg as a fellow by Peter Otsen.
32:24
Speaker 2: Peter flew over to where where this fellow was living
32:28
Speaker 2: and took a statement from Peter was a trained attorney.
32:31
Speaker 2: So we've got that piece of evidence. Well, that people
32:34
Speaker 2: on that side knew. The other interesting part about it
32:37
Speaker 2: was that that Martin Velts flew over to type immediately.
32:42
Speaker 2: It was a newspaper reporter. You remember Martin Velt of Noseweek.
32:47
Speaker 2: He flew over. He was acting for one of the
32:49
Speaker 2: Afrikaans newspapers. He flew over the virtually immediately to type
32:54
Speaker 2: and he discovered some very interestings. He found. He found
32:58
Speaker 2: that the entire manifest for the Heldeberg had been destroyed,
33:01
Speaker 2: put through a shredder. You don't do that. You don't
33:05
Speaker 2: shread your manifest until it becomes and you keep it.
33:10
Speaker 2: And they reconstructed the manifest. So that's suspicious. And somebody
33:17
Speaker 2: who knew about it was due to meet with Martin
33:19
Speaker 2: and would run over and killed on the morning that
33:21
Speaker 2: he was.
33:21
Speaker 1: Due to meet Martin just coincidentally, just coincidentally.
33:26
Speaker 2: So from that point of view, there are a number
33:29
Speaker 2: of things that happened to the Heldeberg, which all points
33:33
Speaker 2: in the Heldeberg carrying illicit cargo which self ignited and
33:39
Speaker 2: caused the loss of that aircraft.
33:41
Speaker 1: The plane took off from Taipei on its way to
33:44
Speaker 1: South Africa. Captain ace knew that there was contraband before
33:51
Speaker 1: taking off, correct dinner was served. Approximately two hours into
33:56
Speaker 1: the flight, there was the firebell that went off, which
33:59
Speaker 1: meant that they were still quite near to Taiwan, that
34:02
Speaker 1: could have landed anywhere, but he was told to continue going. Yes,
34:09
Speaker 1: so something at this point had ignited at the back
34:12
Speaker 1: of the plane.
34:13
Speaker 2: There was a first fire. Right now, there's something more
34:18
Speaker 2: important about this. When the flight all the flight crew
34:24
Speaker 2: were killed, and the engineers Association, the flight Engineers Association,
34:30
Speaker 2: which there was one, got together and worked out that
34:36
Speaker 2: this whole narrative that was coming out could not have
34:39
Speaker 2: happened that way, and they prepared a report for Margo.
34:44
Speaker 2: And what happened was that they prepared this report and
34:48
Speaker 2: handed it to Margo, and Margo called them all in
34:54
Speaker 2: into his chambers in the presence of the attorney for
34:58
Speaker 2: SAA and and other SA representatives and told them drop
35:04
Speaker 2: the report, don't push this because and one of them
35:11
Speaker 2: and I got a statement from from from from the
35:14
Speaker 2: wife of one of these people signed statement that they
35:20
Speaker 2: were told it's it's dangerous for your health, you don't
35:25
Speaker 2: know what you're doing, it's got security implications and for
35:30
Speaker 2: your own safety. Drop it. Now. That's a peculiar thing.
35:33
Speaker 2: Number One, Margot should not be meeting with potential witnesses
35:37
Speaker 2: on his own ex party. He should not be doing that.
35:40
Speaker 2: They should have been represented from everybody and they weren't. Secondly,
35:45
Speaker 2: what on earth is an aircraft accident got to do
35:47
Speaker 2: a security purposes? Security reasons? And thirdly, why was he
35:52
Speaker 2: so keen that they drop it? Okay? Now that is
35:58
Speaker 2: there are people and those people by the way that
36:01
Speaker 2: gave me this that I subsequently gone silent. I was
36:04
Speaker 2: also approached by a fellow who was in a very
36:09
Speaker 2: secretive way, James Bond type way. A fellow in who
36:16
Speaker 2: was a flight engineer, who met me out in Halfway
36:24
Speaker 2: House and he wanted me to sit at the Boulders
36:27
Speaker 2: restaurant and he snuck up on me to make sure
36:29
Speaker 2: I wasn't accompanied by anybody, and he told me the story.
36:32
Speaker 2: He told me he was there present, He was there
36:33
Speaker 2: when Marco said this to them. He subsequently refused to
36:37
Speaker 2: make a statement. Okay, went quiet. And the reasons for that,
36:41
Speaker 2: I think that they were threatened and bludgeoned or bribed
36:46
Speaker 2: or whatever into into not going further with me. Now,
36:53
Speaker 2: the long and short of all of that was that
36:56
Speaker 2: the air traffic controlled the the the the Flight Engineers
37:02
Speaker 2: Association went quiet, and that evidence was never never aired
37:06
Speaker 2: until I brought it up in the subsequent hearings relating
37:12
Speaker 2: to the newspaper, the style newspaper at the Press Council.
37:19
Speaker 2: So there's something very suspicious that, Mago. And by the way,
37:24
Speaker 2: you remember in the beginning I said to you that
37:26
Speaker 2: the prosecutor said that Captain Toy was due to wanting
37:31
Speaker 2: to introduce himself. Remember that the wood stood up and
37:34
Speaker 2: Margo then made his own objection and made his own ruling. Now,
37:41
Speaker 2: the the man who was supposed to make the objection
37:45
Speaker 2: and obviously got caught in traffic, and he pitched up
37:49
Speaker 2: an hour or so later and got up and made
37:52
Speaker 2: the objection he was supposed to have made earlier. So
37:55
Speaker 2: you can see that was a stitch up there. The
37:57
Speaker 2: other thing it was said on the beginning part of
38:00
Speaker 2: the tape was a woman comes into the cockpit and
38:02
Speaker 2: says to as the following. I'll translate it for you
38:05
Speaker 2: because it was an Afrikaan She said, Captain, you must
38:08
Speaker 2: look after us tonight. Now that remark is irrelevant at
38:12
Speaker 2: the top of descent where they're about to go down
38:14
Speaker 2: into Mauritius, because if he hasn't looked after them by
38:17
Speaker 2: then it's too late. That remark is only relevant at
38:20
Speaker 2: the beginning of a flight.
38:22
Speaker 1: It's also a weird comment to make.
38:24
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's a sort of banter that crew would
38:26
Speaker 2: make look after us tonight, captain, you know, see see.
38:30
Speaker 1: Right, So that's as casual a casual banter.
38:34
Speaker 2: Okay. Now, all of that points in one direction to
38:38
Speaker 2: the dinner being served and to the ear the earliness
38:40
Speaker 2: of the flight. Because the cockpit recorder only records half
38:46
Speaker 2: an hour and tapes over itself, so it was a
38:48
Speaker 2: half our tape recording and it it didn't tape over
38:53
Speaker 2: itself for the simple reason that the fire burnt through
38:57
Speaker 2: the power supply to the cockpit voice recorder, which is
39:00
Speaker 2: situated in the tail and that flight recorder it kept
39:08
Speaker 2: the information that had and didn't overtape itself, and it
39:12
Speaker 2: was recovered. Now, Robert Kirby did me many favors, not
39:18
Speaker 2: least which by running a satirical comment You remember used
39:21
Speaker 2: to be a columnist for the Weekly Man and Guardian, Okay,
39:27
Speaker 2: and he took grave exception to me. He wrote a
39:30
Speaker 2: number of scurrellous pieces about me, which I used to
39:32
Speaker 2: find very amusing. I used to devote a whole page
39:36
Speaker 2: to me at the time of the Hildeberg and what
39:41
Speaker 2: a fool I was, and more so that no pilot
39:44
Speaker 2: would ever allow himself to be overruled by anybody else.
39:48
Speaker 2: He was the king of the craft. He could do
39:52
Speaker 2: whatever he liked. He misses the point that once you've
39:57
Speaker 2: committed a criminal which is to take on board that material,
40:03
Speaker 2: he was no longer the master of his own fate.
40:07
Speaker 2: He was in the hands of his masters, the puppet controllers.
40:10
Speaker 2: That's the one thing. And the second point that aceh
40:13
Speaker 2: maade was why on earth would the South African government
40:19
Speaker 2: fly a huge, expensive expedition up to Mauritius to recover
40:24
Speaker 2: and spend a lot of money recovering the debris. And
40:29
Speaker 2: there's a very good reason for that. If you're a
40:32
Speaker 2: criminal and there's a crime scene and some idiot gives
40:38
Speaker 2: you the opportunity to go and play in the crime
40:41
Speaker 2: scene as the criminal. That is manner from heaven, because
40:46
Speaker 2: you can get to all the criminating data and make
40:49
Speaker 2: sure it doesn't get loose. So it was essential for essay,
40:54
Speaker 2: and they had people up on Mauritia scouring the beaches
40:57
Speaker 2: in case anything flow to the shore Okay, And the
41:02
Speaker 2: net result of all of that was that it was
41:05
Speaker 2: essential that they do it. And number two, you can say,
41:09
Speaker 2: look look what we've done. We've gone to all this
41:11
Speaker 2: effort to try and find out what happened. That's not
41:13
Speaker 2: the reason they did it. The reason was they want
41:16
Speaker 2: to be first on the scene to make certain that
41:18
Speaker 2: nothing was released without their knowledge and say so permission.
41:25
Speaker 2: So from that point of view, it's it's not surprising
41:29
Speaker 2: that they did that. That is exactly what any criminal
41:32
Speaker 2: would want to do. Now, incidentally, this whole matter, something
41:38
Speaker 2: happened outside our pay and I don't know what it was,
41:41
Speaker 2: and I'm leaving it like that because I don't know
41:44
Speaker 2: what it was. I have a suspicion, but I can't
41:47
Speaker 2: take it further because I've got no independent proof of that.
41:51
Speaker 2: But I got the opportunity to cross examine Kart fund
41:54
Speaker 2: of Fear at the inquiry. I gave evidence and then
42:00
Speaker 2: I was sworn in as a commissioner and I cross
42:03
Speaker 2: examined cut front of Fear, and briefly my cross examination
42:07
Speaker 2: went to followed, and that, by the way, is available
42:09
Speaker 2: to anybody who wants to look at it on type
42:12
Speaker 2: into Google search TORC hearing Klatso Heldeberg fund of Fear,
42:18
Speaker 2: and you come up with my cross examination and the
42:21
Speaker 2: cross examination in short winters followed. It's fron the fair.
42:24
Speaker 2: You you were very involved with essay and you knew
42:27
Speaker 2: the damage done by losing the zu R tape. Yes,
42:31
Speaker 2: when the man who came to you and said him,
42:33
Speaker 2: we've lost the tape, We've lost the tape, what did
42:36
Speaker 2: you with? What action did you take? I did nothing.
42:39
Speaker 2: Now that's the first lie. If somebody had lost the tape,
42:42
Speaker 2: which was that important to the inquiry, you would have
42:45
Speaker 2: a CEO of SAA. You would have torn fifty different
42:49
Speaker 2: strips of him. So then I said to him, well,
42:52
Speaker 2: can you remember who it was? Oh no, he said.
42:54
Speaker 2: You know, and people mop their brow when they're lying
42:57
Speaker 2: to you. He said, I can't remember it was. That's
43:00
Speaker 2: line number two, because if you torn a strip off
43:02
Speaker 2: somebody who had made that elementary and huge mistake, you
43:07
Speaker 2: would remember it till ther dying day. The third question
43:12
Speaker 2: I asked him was at the very end where I
43:14
Speaker 2: was running out of time to cross examine him. I
43:17
Speaker 2: said to him, mister Fadafia, I have a witness whom
43:21
Speaker 2: I will call, who will say that he handed the
43:23
Speaker 2: tape to you. It never went missing. Remember, mister Vanafia,
43:28
Speaker 2: you're under oath. I said that to him. Are you
43:33
Speaker 2: prepared to deny that? He said, no, I'm not prepared
43:37
Speaker 2: to deny that. So there you've got. There, you've got
43:40
Speaker 2: where the tape went. The man who had the tape
43:42
Speaker 2: not prepared to deny, and he'd remember that he had
43:45
Speaker 2: the tape and he did have the tape.
43:48
Speaker 1: Now, obviously nobody has ever been held accountable.
43:52
Speaker 2: No, no, and nobody was ever paid out. And I
43:56
Speaker 2: would I would dearly love that inquiry to be reopened
43:59
Speaker 2: because you know that although the claims against essay, well,
44:04
Speaker 2: it might be a sort of pyrrhic victory if we
44:09
Speaker 2: open it now, because Essay is no longer there. But
44:11
Speaker 2: the government, by the way, has taken over the liabilities
44:15
Speaker 2: of the defunct SAA, and someone needs to look into
44:19
Speaker 2: that because of anybody sues the government for that loss,
44:22
Speaker 2: and the government of the day was involved. There's no
44:25
Speaker 2: question in my mind that fraud cures prescription that is
44:29
Speaker 2: long ago prescribed. You know, you've got to launch an
44:31
Speaker 2: action within three years of the event taking place unless
44:36
Speaker 2: you can show that there's fraud involved in the information
44:40
Speaker 2: you had at the time, and that cures prescription, and
44:42
Speaker 2: prescription starts afresh and runs again three years. And I
44:46
Speaker 2: would love somebody to take that up and actually run
44:51
Speaker 2: another inquiry and cross examine people, many of whom, by
44:55
Speaker 2: the way, have died. Jimmy Dealers dead. Drvy Aisha he
45:00
Speaker 2: is dead. Micky Mitchell is dead. Had vander Fair I
45:05
Speaker 2: think is on his last legs. If he's not dead,
45:07
Speaker 2: he was he was going but strange at some stage
45:11
Speaker 2: and we couldn't get hold of him. But the point
45:14
Speaker 2: is that there are pilots ahead. And AS's wife, by
45:16
Speaker 2: the way, Torri Peturius went took a statement from Ace's wife,
45:21
Speaker 2: together with a police officer called Whale and they took
45:28
Speaker 2: a statement from her, and when they took it back
45:31
Speaker 2: to her to sign the type copy, she refused to
45:34
Speaker 2: sign it unless certain guarantees were made. Now, it was
45:38
Speaker 2: always open to the state to subpoeno in terms of
45:42
Speaker 2: section two O six and take her and force her
45:46
Speaker 2: before a magistrate to give to give a statement. They
45:49
Speaker 2: didn't do that, and they gave me various spurious reasons
45:52
Speaker 2: why they They said a charge has to be laid.
45:54
Speaker 2: That's rubbish. They can if they think if they think
45:58
Speaker 2: you know something about a crime, they don't have to
46:00
Speaker 2: lay a charge they need to. They can. They can
46:02
Speaker 2: two or five. And you can ask any journalist who
46:05
Speaker 2: is to to the two or five for ter six
46:08
Speaker 2: who was subpoena in terms of that act to give
46:11
Speaker 2: evidence and locked up if they didn't give the evidence.
46:14
Speaker 2: So missus Ah knows something about it, and she has
46:17
Speaker 2: stayed absolutely silent about it for all these years. I
46:22
Speaker 2: cross examined Tory pretorious and he gave me. He gave
46:25
Speaker 2: me the reasons why he intimated to me the reasons
46:29
Speaker 2: why she stayed silent, and I put to him that
46:31
Speaker 2: the reason was that she didn't want her hush money
46:34
Speaker 2: to be to be interfered with. Now, hush money is
46:38
Speaker 2: always able to be interfered with, because it is against
46:41
Speaker 2: good moral to pay hush money, But the pension fund
46:45
Speaker 2: that she was entitled to her husband from her husband
46:49
Speaker 2: was not interferable with. Nobody could interfere with that. So
46:53
Speaker 2: I'd like to know from missus h why she stayed silent.
46:55
Speaker 1: You said something happened fairly close to tay Wan, presumably
47:01
Speaker 1: a file of some sort which maybe they extinguished because
47:05
Speaker 1: they flew from another seven or eight hours.
47:07
Speaker 2: I think there was a limited amount of the stuff.
47:10
Speaker 2: What the purpose was was to bring a sample back
47:13
Speaker 2: to South Africa, and once you put a sample, you
47:16
Speaker 2: can reverse engineer very quickly. At some kemp. It would
47:20
Speaker 2: have taken them a week to reverse engineer that, so
47:24
Speaker 2: from that point maybe even less. But the point is
47:28
Speaker 2: that once they got that fire out, they thought they
47:30
Speaker 2: could make it once they'd been told to fly on.
47:34
Speaker 2: And I don't know what happened, whether it reignited outside
47:37
Speaker 2: Taype or not, but something happened acause the loss of
47:41
Speaker 2: their craft, and I think it broke up in mid.
47:43
Speaker 1: Air, so maybe an explosion of some sort in the sky.
47:46
Speaker 2: Now it won't explode. That sort of stuff you know,
47:49
Speaker 2: you can take, you can take. You can take gunpowder,
47:52
Speaker 2: which in confined in the cartridge case will explode and
47:55
Speaker 2: push a bullet out quite quickly. But if you take
47:58
Speaker 2: that propellant in the cartrication, put it on a on
48:01
Speaker 2: a on a saucer and lighted, it just burns very quickly.
48:05
Speaker 2: And the same as true of the monium pecchlorate. But
48:07
Speaker 2: it is certainly not allowed to be carried on civilian airliners,
48:13
Speaker 2: and it would have burned. And by the way, the
48:15
Speaker 2: normal fire extinguishing methods to put out a fire, to
48:18
Speaker 2: deprive it of oxygen, would not have worked because it
48:22
Speaker 2: had its own built in oxygen into the molecule of
48:25
Speaker 2: ammonium pectorate. Perchlorates are notoriously unstable.
48:29
Speaker 1: The cargo was at the back behind the passengers, Smoke
48:33
Speaker 1: would smoke would have come into the into the into
48:36
Speaker 1: the main part of the plane.
48:37
Speaker 2: It did, Okay. That's another very interesting part because in
48:42
Speaker 2: the Manchester air disaster which occurred I think it was
48:46
Speaker 2: a seven three seven caught fire on the runway. It
48:50
Speaker 2: took them about less than a minute to get everybody out,
48:53
Speaker 2: and there were there were significant casualties in that deaths
48:56
Speaker 2: in that from smoke inhalation, and the rear is quite
49:01
Speaker 2: horrible because when you burn the plastics the seat covers
49:05
Speaker 2: the seat, the seat cushions in an aircraft are made
49:08
Speaker 2: of polyurethane, and the plastics of the wiring in the
49:13
Speaker 2: aircraft are made of polyvinyl chloride PVC. And because of
49:18
Speaker 2: the limited oxygen in the atmosphere, you are to produce
49:21
Speaker 2: significant amounts of carbon monoxide. Now those three, when you
49:27
Speaker 2: burn polyurethane, you make hydrogen cyanide gas. And remember hydrogen
49:34
Speaker 2: cyanide gas is the gas that the Americans used to
49:36
Speaker 2: use in the gas chamber for killing people. And if
49:40
Speaker 2: you mix that with hydrogen burning PVC, which produces hydrogen chloride,
49:45
Speaker 2: which is pool acid in a vapor form, and you
49:49
Speaker 2: mix those two with carbon monoxide, you've got a lethal
49:53
Speaker 2: concoction within three or four breaths, which will kill you
49:56
Speaker 2: stone dead. And we know that, we we know that,
50:00
Speaker 2: we know that the passengers, everybody in that aircraft, were
50:03
Speaker 2: all huddled in the in the first class compartment, and
50:08
Speaker 2: we know that because they they they they had to
50:11
Speaker 2: trim the aircraft out to fly with the passengers all
50:15
Speaker 2: sitting up in the or lying around in the in
50:17
Speaker 2: the front of the airplane. And we know that because
50:20
Speaker 2: they recovered the tail, uh the ball joint on the elevators,
50:27
Speaker 2: on the trim stabilizers, and those those ball joints, you
50:32
Speaker 2: can calculate exactly how the plane was trimmed.
50:37
Speaker 1: So they pushed, they pushed all the passengers to the front.
50:41
Speaker 2: Correct to try to get them away from the smoke.
50:43
Speaker 2: But I think I think by the time Ace was
50:46
Speaker 2: near Mauritius, I think after the first fire, he had
50:49
Speaker 2: death sunboard because there's nowhere for that smoke to go,
50:52
Speaker 2: and that smoke is very toxic. So I think he
50:56
Speaker 2: was flying a coffin back to Mauritius.
51:01
Speaker 1: Now, just as a matter of speculation, David, what do
51:05
Speaker 1: you think might have happened had he landed in Mauritius.
51:10
Speaker 2: Had he landed in Mauritius. Well, the first thing, somebody
51:13
Speaker 2: would have examined the cargo hold, and that would have
51:16
Speaker 2: been very much more difficult to keep under wraps. And
51:20
Speaker 2: and by the way, what do you do with with
51:22
Speaker 2: one one hundred and fifty odd passengers are dead? You
51:27
Speaker 2: tell the you tell their family. Sorry, we fly your way.
51:33
Speaker 2: I don't think so. There would have been no way
51:35
Speaker 2: of concealing the bodies.
51:38
Speaker 1: So it was a dead end for ACE and for SAA.
51:40
Speaker 2: No matter what, if it got to Mauritius, it was
51:44
Speaker 2: the end of SAA.
51:48
Speaker 1: So then do you think he might have actually crashed
51:51
Speaker 1: the plane in that case?
51:53
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. I don't think. I don't
51:55
Speaker 2: think I was going to commit suicide to protect the ESSAA.
51:59
Speaker 2: He was going to let let the events unfold as
52:02
Speaker 2: they unfolded.
52:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they just simply couldn't make it.
52:06
Speaker 2: Didn't make it. No.
52:09
Speaker 1: Just as a matter of trivia, For those who don't know,
52:14
Speaker 1: we keep saying Heldeburg. That was the name given to
52:17
Speaker 1: flight two nine five, And Heldeberg is an Afrikaans word.
52:20
Speaker 2: I was the name of the aircraft.
52:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Helderberg means bright mountain. Basically in English, there
52:25
Speaker 1: was a there was a there's a mountain.
52:27
Speaker 2: There's an area, a suburb of Somerset.
52:32
Speaker 1: We it's called Hildeberg, Yeah, which is not as far
52:34
Speaker 1: from it's not far from.
52:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're in the shadow of it, and we all
52:40
Speaker 2: live in the shadow of the aircraft accident.
52:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you mean by that?
52:45
Speaker 2: Well, you know, people often say why do you continue
52:48
Speaker 2: about it? I think that if you allow a government
52:51
Speaker 2: to get away with what I considered to be a
52:55
Speaker 2: mass murder, you any government should know that while there
53:01
Speaker 2: are people of an ability to investigate it, they will
53:07
Speaker 2: then be investigated to the nth degree. And I think
53:09
Speaker 2: that is an important thing for any government to know
53:13
Speaker 2: that nobody will give up on it. It's not going
53:15
Speaker 2: to quietly go away, which is what governments practice. They
53:19
Speaker 2: love practicing things to go away. So from that point,
53:25
Speaker 2: from that point of view, that the Hildeberg should never
53:28
Speaker 2: be allowed to rest. And I think that it's a
53:32
Speaker 2: salutary lesson for everybody that you should never trust the government,
53:37
Speaker 2: which we're learning. We're learning rather remarkably at the moment
53:41
Speaker 2: as well.
53:43
Speaker 1: Another interesting piece of the puzzle is those configurations that
53:49
Speaker 1: can be configuration with passengers and cargo. It's no longer
53:52
Speaker 1: in use anywhere in the world.
53:54
Speaker 2: Give out a service after the Helderberg. Yeah, Boye could
53:58
Speaker 2: not afford the liability of having such an aircraft, particularly
54:02
Speaker 2: after the Elderberg. An electrical fault would not have produced
54:05
Speaker 2: a damage to the external surface the way it did.
54:08
Speaker 2: An electrical fault is reasonably easy to put out a
54:11
Speaker 2: normal fire. Extingus should put out an electrical fault, But
54:15
Speaker 2: what it won't do is won't put out a manium
54:18
Speaker 2: perchlorate because the manium perchlori has its own oxygen, so
54:21
Speaker 2: if you cut off the outside oxygen, it doesn't mind.
54:24
Speaker 1: And do you think that the Taiwanese knew?
54:29
Speaker 2: Yes, they did, so that they knew.
54:32
Speaker 1: What was being packed on the plane, they just kept
54:34
Speaker 1: quiet about it.
54:35
Speaker 2: I suspect. So, yeah, the funny things that happened in Taiwan,
54:39
Speaker 2: the destruction of the manifest. That manifest should have been impounded.
54:44
Speaker 1: And do you think that the Mauritius authorities knew No.
54:48
Speaker 2: No, I don't think they knew. No. The air traffic
54:51
Speaker 2: controller didn't know whatever he was trying to guide the
54:54
Speaker 2: aircraft in. There's a tape recording of that last conversation
54:58
Speaker 2: which you can probably get on YouTube.
55:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, just as a matter of trivia, also, Mauritius is
55:04
Speaker 1: about four hours flights from Johannesburg, so it was just
55:07
Speaker 1: a bit too.
55:08
Speaker 2: Far, Yeah, particularly seeing we had to fly around round
55:14
Speaker 2: the Bult to get there.
55:15
Speaker 1: Yes, because of a parth eight and we were sanctioned,
55:17
Speaker 1: so we weren't allowed to go over any African country.
55:21
Speaker 2: Correct, well, you didn't have to flower in the bulls
55:24
Speaker 2: to get to Mauritius. But but it's the reason why
55:27
Speaker 2: we had zi. You are set up?
55:31
Speaker 1: Okay, so we now what what forty years away from
55:36
Speaker 1: from that?
55:38
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy eight?
55:40
Speaker 1: No, eighty seven, you mean eighty seven?
55:42
Speaker 2: Sorry eighty seven? Yeah?
55:45
Speaker 1: Do you think it will ever be.
55:48
Speaker 2: Kicked in?
55:50
Speaker 1: Do you think it will ever be reopened? Or do
55:51
Speaker 1: you think the truth will ever come out?
55:53
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, I didn't think the truth
55:58
Speaker 2: about the hit squads would come out until Nofamelo was
56:01
Speaker 2: on death row and spilled the beans, and then it
56:05
Speaker 2: all came out. And I've presented this evidence as I've
56:10
Speaker 2: given to you today, are presented at the Truth and
56:13
Speaker 2: Reconciliation Commission, and it's all written down in my book
56:17
Speaker 2: Steeped in Blood. Shall I hold up a copy for you?
56:23
Speaker 2: Steeped in Blood? Okay? That book is still available on Amazon.
56:32
Speaker 1: So other than Captain Ace's wife, who do you think
56:37
Speaker 1: is still alive who might know the truth?
56:40
Speaker 2: I don't know. They getting anybody alive is getting on
56:45
Speaker 2: in years, getting on in your and in fact they're
56:50
Speaker 2: dying off.
56:53
Speaker 1: I just want to repeat something that I said earlier.
56:55
Speaker 1: We mentioned that YouTube channel meant to a pilot, and
56:58
Speaker 1: that's a very big channel. I think it's three or
57:00
Speaker 1: four million subscribers, a lot of aviation stuff there. If
57:04
Speaker 1: you you know, if anybody does watch the video on
57:06
Speaker 1: the Helderberg, they must remember that he does leave out
57:09
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of important areation what.
57:12
Speaker 2: I've told you. There's another thing which I haven't told you.
57:17
Speaker 2: Sometime in the middle of all of this, I persuaded
57:19
Speaker 2: Tony Leon to ask a question of the minister in parliament,
57:23
Speaker 2: which he did, and she sent somebody whom I know
57:27
Speaker 2: who was her researcher off to go researcher.
57:31
Speaker 1: Just for clarity, Tony Leon was imposition leader.
57:35
Speaker 2: The leader of the opposition. He asked this question in
57:38
Speaker 2: parliament and this this woman who's now dead. The minister
57:42
Speaker 2: sent this man off I shall not name because he's
57:45
Speaker 2: got money and he'll sue me. She sent her researcher
57:49
Speaker 2: off to go and research it. And one of the
57:51
Speaker 2: one of the intelligence agents, said, and why are you
57:54
Speaker 2: bothering We all know that it was rocket fuel on
57:57
Speaker 2: board the aircraft, and there's a statement to that effect
58:01
Speaker 2: which he would not sign. So everything points in that direction.
58:06
Speaker 2: There's been a recent I think it's an mweb production
58:10
Speaker 2: where I participated, where they tried to put out another
58:13
Speaker 2: narrative and the two fellows who counted my argument were
58:17
Speaker 2: invited by me for a public debate, and very wisely
58:20
Speaker 2: they declined. Yeah.
58:24
Speaker 1: I mean, as I said to you previously, I don't
58:26
Speaker 1: know anybody who knows as much about the Helderberg as you.
58:31
Speaker 2: Well, there you are. It's the defining moment of my life.
58:36
Speaker 1: Okay, David. So as we excuse the pun, as we're
58:38
Speaker 1: come in for a landing. The moral of the story
58:42
Speaker 1: is that the South African government tried to bring military
58:49
Speaker 1: grade stuff into the country and failed and a lot
58:54
Speaker 1: of people and a lot of people lost their lives,
58:56
Speaker 1: innocent people who had no idea. Yeah, and it must
59:00
Speaker 1: have been.
59:02
Speaker 2: Yes, and a Sibilian passenger aircraft.
59:05
Speaker 1: It must have been. I'm just thinking now it must
59:07
Speaker 1: have been traumatic being on that plane.
59:10
Speaker 2: Well, I think you would have been dead quite quickly.
59:12
Speaker 2: You know, you don't have to take too many sniffs
59:14
Speaker 2: of that that leth Or cocktail to die, But.
59:17
Speaker 1: You would have seen a smoke. There must have been
59:19
Speaker 1: chaos on board.
59:21
Speaker 2: I think you would have been dead very quickly, very quickly.
59:26
Speaker 1: Yet somehow the staff made it well.
59:31
Speaker 2: Yes and no, remember some of the staff had portable
59:34
Speaker 2: oxygen kits okay, and the cockpit crew don't don't breathe
59:40
Speaker 2: the cabin atmosphere. They've got pure oxygen which they breathe
59:51
Speaker 2: pure oxygen, so they wouldn't have been affected.
59:55
Speaker 1: This disaster is widely considered one of the most interesting
59:59
Speaker 1: in aviation history.
1:00:01
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, seeing from a number of points of view,
1:00:06
Speaker 2: there are many many aspects of it which make it fascinating,
1:00:11
Speaker 2: horrible and and and a lesson to be learned.
1:00:18
Speaker 1: And just as a matter of trivia, again, this is
1:00:20
Speaker 1: the last time that South Africa had an air crash
1:00:25
Speaker 1: officially yes.
1:00:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, Margot was involved in several other
1:00:30
Speaker 2: dodgy investigations, one of which was the Red Book.
1:00:34
Speaker 1: Oh that was that was a small plane off the
1:00:37
Speaker 1: East coast I think.
1:00:38
Speaker 2: Seven seven three seven, I think of the Port Elizabeth
1:00:42
Speaker 2: or East London, I can't remember which. It was Kid's Beach,
1:00:45
Speaker 2: which is that? Yeah, I think it's also the s
1:00:51
Speaker 2: A Pretorious which crashed at Vint took.
1:00:54
Speaker 1: But those weren't. Those weren't official South African Airways flights.
1:00:58
Speaker 2: They were were there?
1:01:00
Speaker 1: Okay, so there were air crashes after the Helderberg.
1:01:04
Speaker 2: Oh yes, No, those were before the helg those.
1:01:06
Speaker 1: Were before all right, okay, okay, all right, it's Marcus
1:01:10
Speaker 1: still live.
1:01:13
Speaker 2: I think he's finding out what happened to the Helderberg
1:01:15
Speaker 2: in Hell.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: David, how can how can how can I get your book?
1:01:29
Speaker 1: How can I follow you?
1:01:32
Speaker 2: How can you follow me? I'm not sure what you
1:01:34
Speaker 2: mean by that question. You can get hold of me
1:01:36
Speaker 2: on my I'm available on David tatso forty h at
1:01:41
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. My phone number you can put up
1:01:45
Speaker 2: on the screen if you want to. Anybody can contact
1:01:48
Speaker 2: me with other information or queries.
1:01:51
Speaker 1: When I say how can I follow you, that's a
1:01:53
Speaker 1: social media kind of question.
1:01:58
Speaker 2: Remember I'm BC before you toue.
1:02:01
Speaker 1: David Clatso, thank you for joining me in the Strangers.
1:02:06
Speaker 2: Okay, m