__NOTOC__ Air France Flight 1611 (AF1611) was a Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle III en route from Ajaccio, in the island of Corsica, to

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard dialect, Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes departments of France, department in France. The Nice urban unit, agg ...

, France, on 11 September 1968 when it crashed into the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ...

off Nice, killing all 95 on board. According to the official report, the crash was non-survivable. The Ajaccio-Nice Caravelle crash is the deadliest aviation incident in the Mediterranean Sea to date. The

probable cause In United States criminal law, probable cause is the standard by which police authorities have reason to obtain a warrant for the arrest of a suspected criminal or the issuing of a search warrant. There is no universally accepted definition o ...

was attributed to a fire of uncertain origin which originated in the rear of the cabin. There was early speculation that the plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile, since there is a firing area not far from the crash site. Although the hypothesis was officially discarded by the inquiry board, many victims' relatives still have doubts and have asked to have access to classified documents about the event.

Official report from French transport ministry

In December 1972, the inquiry board of the French ministry of transportation published its official report. The report surmised that the loss of the aircraft had been caused by a fire in the passenger toilet caused either by a defective water heater or a cigarette discarded in a waste bin. This rejected the suggestion of any missile strike, basing its findings on the aircraft's survival time after the pilot's initial report to air traffic control of a fire on board, the examination of the wreckage recovered from the seabed, knowledge of a similar accidental fire in another Sud Aviation Caravelle, and the declaration by the French defence ministry that there were no surface ships in the area capable of launching missiles. Among the dead was French general René Cogny.

Missile theory

On 10 May 2011, Michel Laty, a former army typist, alleged on French television channel TF1 that he saw a report indicating a missile, misfired by the French army during a weapon test, in fact caused the crash. A 2019 article in ''

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 ...

'' newspaper reported that, after the crash, documents and photographs about it disappeared. The 11 September page in the log book for '' Le Suffren'', a French Navy missile frigate in the area, was torn out. The aircraft's black box flight recorder was said to have been damaged, with the recording of flight AF1611 unreadable, although earlier flights were recorded. Wreckage recovered was seized by France's military. An investigation was started in 2011 by gendarmes, and in September 2019 the theory that a fire had started in a toilet was disproved. A family member of one of those killed said "The investigating judge has said he is practically certain to almost 100% that the plane was hit by a missile. Now we are waiting". French president Emmanuel Macron wrote to a victim's family, saying that he hoped the affair would be declassified, and that he had asked the armed forces minister to begin the process of releasing documents related to the crash.

References

External links

"Arthur O'Connor's Last Flight"
��''Factual'', 14 November 2007; BBC Radio 4 programme *
The Other 9/11
—More details about this crash, subsequent investigation, and the mysteries that surround it {{Portal bar, Aviation, France Airliner accidents and incidents caused by in-flight fires Aviation accidents and incidents in 1968 Aviation accidents and incidents in France Aviation accidents and incidents in the Mediterranean Sea

1611 Events January–June * February 27 – Sunspots are observed by telescope, by Frisian astronomers Johannes Fabricius and David Fabricius. Johannes publishes the results of these observations, in ''De Maculis in Sole observat ...

1968 in France Accidents and incidents involving the Sud Aviation Caravelle Conspiracy theories involving aviation incidents September 1968 events in Europe 1968 disasters in France