![Flight JAT367](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Flight_JAT367.png)
JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 was a
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32
The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 is an American five-abreast single-aisle aircraft designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was initially produced by the developer company as the Douglas DC-9 until August 1967 and then by McDonnell Douglas.
After ...
aircraft (registration YU-AHT) which exploded shortly after overflying
NDB Hermsdorf (located in or around
Hinterhermsdorf
Sebnitz (; hsb, Zebnica) is a town in the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district, in Saxony, Germany.
Geography
The town of Sebnitz lies in the valley of the river Sebnitz and its side valleys between 251 and 460 m above sea level betwee ...
, in the present-day municipality of
Sebnitz
Sebnitz (; hsb, Zebnica) is a town in the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district, in Saxony, Germany.
Geography
The town of Sebnitz lies in the valley of the river Sebnitz and its side valleys between 251 and 460 m above sea level betwee ...
),
East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
, while en route from
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
to
Belgrade
Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...
on 26 January 1972. The aircraft, piloted by captain Ludvik Razdrih and first officer Ratko Mihić, broke into three pieces and spun out of control, crashing near the village of
Srbská Kamenice
Srbská Kamenice (german: Windisch Kamnitz) is a municipality and village in Děčín District in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 300 inhabitants.
History
The first written mention of Srbská Kamenice is from 1352. ...
in
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
(now the
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...
). Of the 28 on board, 27 were killed upon ground impact and one
Yugoslav crew member,
Vesna Vulović
Vesna Vulović ( sr-Cyrl, Весна Вуловић, ; 3 January 1950 23 December 2016) was a Serbian flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: . She was the sole survivor after ...
(1950–2016), survived. She holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute at .
Cause
The secondary crew of JAT Flight 367, flying from
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
to
Belgrade
Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...
with
stopovers in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
and
Zagreb
Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...
, arrived in Denmark on the morning of 25 January 1972.
Flight 367 departed from
Stockholm Arlanda Airport
Stockholm Arlanda Airport is an international airport located in the Sigtuna Municipality of Sweden, near the town of Märsta, north of Stockholm and nearly south-east of Uppsala. The airport is located within Stockholm County and the prov ...
at 1:30 p.m. on 26 January. The aircraft, a
McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32
The McDonnell Douglas DC-9 is an American five-abreast single-aisle aircraft designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was initially produced by the developer company as the Douglas DC-9 until August 1967 and then by McDonnell Douglas.
After ...
, landed at
Copenhagen Airport
Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup ( da, Københavns Lufthavn, Kastrup, ; ) is an international airport serving Copenhagen, Denmark, Zealand, the Øresund Region, and southern Sweden including Scania. It is the second largest airport in the Nordic coun ...
at 2:30 p.m., where it was taken over by Vulović and her colleagues.
"As it was late, we were in the terminal and saw it park," Vulović said. "I saw all the passengers and crew deplane. One man seemed terribly annoyed. It was not only me that noticed him either. Other crew members saw him, as did the station manager in Copenhagen. I think it was the man who put the bomb in the baggage. I think he had checked in a bag in Stockholm, got off in Copenhagen and never re-boarded the flight."
Flight 367 departed from Copenhagen Airport at 3:15 p.m. At 4:01 p.m., an explosion tore through the DC-9's baggage compartment.
The explosion caused the aircraft to break apart over the
Czechoslovak
Czechoslovak may refer to:
*A demonym or adjective pertaining to Czechoslovakia (1918–93)
**First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38)
**Second Czechoslovak Republic (1938–39)
**Third Czechoslovak Republic (1948–60)
**Fourth Czechoslovak Repub ...
village of
Srbská Kamenice.
Vulović was the only survivor of the 28 passengers and crew.
Some reports stated Vulović was at the rear of the aircraft when the explosion occurred, but she has stated she was told that she was found in the middle section of the plane.
She was discovered by villager Bruno Honke, who heard her screaming amid the wreckage. Her turquoise uniform was covered in blood and her
stiletto heel
A stiletto heel, or just stiletto, is a shoe with a long, thin, high heel. It is named after the stiletto dagger.
Stiletto heels may vary in length from 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) to 25 cm (10 inches) or more if a platform s ...
s had been torn off by the force of the impact.
Honke had been a medic during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and was able to keep Vulović alive until rescuers arrived.
Vulović was in a coma for 27 days and was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, but survived. She continued working for JAT, holding a desk job.
[
Between 1962 and 1982, ]Croatian nationalists
Croatian nationalism is nationalism that asserts the nationality of Croats and promotes the cultural unity of Croats.
Modern Croatian nationalism first arose in the 19th century after Budapest exerted increasing pressure for Magyarization of Cro ...
carried out 128 terror attacks against Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
n civilian and military targets. The Yugoslav authorities suspected that émigré Croatian terrorists ('' Ustashe'') were to blame for bringing down Flight 367. The day of the crash, a bomb exploded aboard a train travelling from Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
to Zagreb, injuring six. A man, describing himself as a Croatian nationalist, called the Swedish newspaper ''Kvällsposten
''Expressen'' (''The Express'') is one of two nationwide evening newspapers in Sweden, the other being ''Aftonbladet''. ''Expressen'' was founded in 1944; its symbol is a wasp and its slogans are "it stings" or "''Expressen'' to your rescue".
...
'' the following day and claimed responsibility for the bombing of Flight 367. No arrests have yet been made. The Czechoslovak Civil Aviation Authority
A civil aviation authority (CAA) is a national or supranational statutory authority that oversees the regulation of civil aviation, including the maintenance of an aircraft register.
Role
Due to the inherent dangers in the use of flight vehicles, ...
later attributed the explosion to a briefcase
A briefcase is a narrow hard-sided box-shaped bag or case used mainly for carrying papers and equipped with a handle. Lawyers commonly use briefcases to carry briefs to present to a court, hence the name. Businesspeople and other white collar ...
bomb.
Shootdown conspiracy theory
The officially stated cause of the Flight 367 crash was challenged occasionally over the years by conspiracy theories
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
. For example, in 1997 the Czech periodical ''Letectví a kosmonautika'' reported that the plane was shot down by mistake by Czechoslovak air defenses.
The discussion about different aspects of the crash was reopened on 8 January 2009, when German news magazine ''Tagesschau
(German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality ...
'' featured a report by investigative journalists Peter Hornung and Pavel Theiner. Allegedly based on newly obtained documents mainly from the Czech Civil Aviation Authority, they concluded that it was "extremely likely" that the plane had been mistakenly shot down only a few hundred meters above the ground by a MiG
Russian Aircraft Corporation "MiG" (russian: Российская самолётостроительная корпорация „МиГ“, Rossiyskaya samolyotostroitel'naya korporatsiya "MiG"), commonly known as Mikoyan and MiG, was a Russi ...
fighter of the Czechoslovak Air Force
The Czechoslovak Air Force (''Československé letectvo'') or the Czechoslovak Army Air Force (''Československé vojenské letectvo'') was the air force branch of the Czechoslovak Army formed in October 1918. The armed forces of Czechoslovakia ce ...
, having been mistaken for an enemy aircraft while attempting a forced landing
A forced landing is a landing by an aircraft made under factors outside the pilot's control, such as the failure of engines, systems, components, or weather which makes continued flight impossible. For a full description of these, see article on ' ...
.[Kate Connolly]
Woman who fell to earth: was air crash survivor's record just propaganda?
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
, 13 January 2009 All the evidence suggesting that the plane was destroyed at high altitude by explosives placed in a suitcase would be therefore have been forged by Czechoslovak secret police.
As evidence that the DC-9 had broken up at a lower altitude, the journalists cited eyewitnesses from Srbská Kamenice, who had seen the plane burning but still intact below the low-hanging clouds, and confirmation of a Serbian aviation expert (who had been present at the crash site) that the debris area had been much too small for a crash from high altitude; it also referred to sightings of a second plane. According to Hornung, Flight 367 got into difficulties, "went into a steep descent and found itself over a sensitive military area", close to a nuclear weapons facility.[ However, Hornung himself stated that for his theory "there are only indications, no evidence".]
Skepticism
Vulović (who had no memory of the crash or the flight after boarding[) referred to the claims that the plane attempted a forced landing or descended to such a low altitude as "nebulous nonsense". A representative of '']Guinness World Records
''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
'', according to the German paper ''Die Tageszeitung
''Die Tageszeitung'' (, “The Daily Newspaper”), is counted as being one of modern Germany's most important newspapers and amongst the top seven. taz is stylized as ''die tageszeitung'' and commonly referred to as ''taz'', is a cooperative-own ...
'', stated that "it seems that at the time Guinness was duped by this swindle just like the rest of the media."[
The Civilian Aviation Authority dismissed the conspiracy theory as media speculation, that appears from time to time. Its spokeswoman added that Authority experts would not comment on them and that findings of the official investigation are being questioned mostly because of the media attractiveness of the story.]
The Czech magazine ''Technet'' quoted a Czech army expert: "In case of violation of the air space, the incident would not be solved by anti-air missiles, but by fighter planes. Also it would not be possible to conceal such incident, as there would be approximately 150–200 people knowing about the incident. They would not have any reason to not tell about the incident today." A potential missile launch would be audible and especially visible for thousands of people long afterwards. He further claims that for the Yugoslav plane, it was technically impossible to dive in a "state of emergency" from the proven flight level
In aviation and aviation meteorology, a flight level (FL) is an aircraft's altitude at standard air pressure, expressed in hundreds of feet. The air pressure is computed assuming an International Standard Atmosphere pressure of 1013.25 hPa ...
to the low altitude and place where it was allegedly shot down. He also states that the debris area wasn't "too small" but that the main parts were more than 1.5 km apart. Additionally, the Czechoslovak Air Defense soldier who operated the radar on the day of the crash stated in a 2009 interview that any Czechoslovak jet fighters would be noticed by West German
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
air defense.
The main evidence against such a theory is the flight data obtained from the black box
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...
, which provided the exact data about the time, speed
In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a scalar quanti ...
, direction, acceleration and altitude of the plane at the moment of the explosion. Both black boxes were opened and analysed by their respective service companies in Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
in the presence of experts from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Netherlands.
Vulović's fall was the subject of a ''MythBusters
''MythBusters'' is a science entertainment television program, developed by Peter Rees and produced by Australia's Beyond Television Productions. The series premiered on the Discovery Channel on January 23, 2003. It was broadcast internatio ...
'' episode, which concluded it was possible to survive the fall depending on how the wreckage someone was sitting in landed.
Vesna Vulović
Vulović holds the official record in the ''Guinness Book of Records'' for the highest fall
Autumn, also known as fall in American English and Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southe ...
survived without a parachute. Vulović received the Guinness prize from Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
.
A major celebrity in Yugoslavia, Vulović was a frequent guest on national television shows such as ''Maksovizija'' by Milovan Ilić Minimaks
Milovan Ilić (; 5 November 1938 – 10 February 2005), better known under his nickname Minimaks ( sr-Cyrl, Минимакс), was a Serbian radio and television host.
Early life
He was born on 5 November 1938 in the village of Lipnica near Kra ...
up until the 1990s. She attended annual commemorations at the crash site, until they were stopped in 2002. The daughter of the firefighter that saved her bears her name, as well as a local hotel called Pension Vesna in the Czech Republic, near the site of the crash.
See also
*
* List of terrorist incidents in 1972
This is a timeline of incidents in 1972 that have been labelled as "terrorism" and are not believed to have been carried out by a government or its forces (see state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism).
Guidelines
*To be included, entries ...
* List of unsolved deaths
This list of unsolved deaths includes well-known cases where:
* The cause of death could not be officially determined.
* The person's identity could not be established after they were found dead.
* The cause is known, but the manner of death (homi ...
* Timeline of airliner bombing attacks
Commercial passenger airliners and cargo aircraft have been the subject of plots or attacks by bombs and fire since near the start of air travel. Many early bombings were suicides or schemes for insurance money, but in the latter part of the 20th ...
References
External links
Accident to Yugoslav aircraft YU-AHT on January 26, 1972 in Czech Kamenica. The blast from explosives in carry-on luggage in the front luggage compartment caused the plane crash of DC-9-30 Yugoslav Airlines flight JU 367 Stockholm – Copenhagen – Zagreb – Belgrade
Archive
PDF format
Archive
*
Summary Report of the State Aviation Investigation Inspectorate of the causes of the accident
(NA, ÚCL, karton 84, sg. 2/1972)]
Archive
** English summary
Analysis and conclusions
Archive
– English extract from the summary report to the International Civil Aviation Organization
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sc ...
(NA, ÚCL, karton 83, sg. 2/1972)
*
Draft interim report – the airspace at the time of the accident: report and radar images (NA, ÚCL, karton 83, sg. 2/1972)
Archive
*
Photos of radar screen at ATC Cottbus (East Germany)
Archive
*
Situační plán havárie letadla 1:10 000, příloha dokumentace o ohledání osobních věcí obětí. Federální ministerstvo vnitra, Odbor vyšetřování StB Ústí nad Labem (NA, ÚCL, karton 83, sg. 2/1972)
)
Airliners.Net: Picture of YU-AHT
at PlaneCrashInfo.com
*
JAT 367 Memorial
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jat Flight 367
Jat Airways accidents and incidents
Unsolved airliner bombings
Aviation accidents and incidents in 1972
Aviation accidents and incidents in Czechoslovakia
1972 in Czechoslovakia
Aviation accidents and incidents in Germany
1972 in Croatia
Accidents and incidents involving the McDonnell Douglas DC-9
Terrorist incidents in Europe in 1972
Mass murder in 1972
Croatian nationalist terrorism
January 1972 events in Europe
Terrorist incidents in Germany in the 1970s
Conspiracy theories involving aviation incidents
Terrorist incidents in the Czech Republic