Air Rhodesia Flight 825

Air Rhodesia Flight 825

A Viscount of Air Rhodesia, similar to the Hunyani
Shootdown
Date	3 September 1978
Summary	Civilian airliner shootdown
Site	Just west of Karoi, Rhodesia[n 1] 16°47′S 29°5′E / 16.783°S 29.083°E / -16.783; 29.083
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Vickers Viscount 782D
Aircraft name	Hunyani
Operator	Air Rhodesia
Registration	VP-WAS[3]
Flight origin	Victoria Falls, Rhodesia
Last stopover	Kariba, Rhodesia
Destination	Salisbury, Rhodesia
Passengers	52
Crew	4
Fatalities	48 (38 in crash, 10 in massacre at the site)
Survivors	8

Air Rhodesia Flight 825 was a scheduled passenger flight that was shot down by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) on 3 September 1978, during the Rhodesian Bush War. The aircraft involved, a Vickers Viscount named the Hunyani, was flying the last leg of Air Rhodesia's regular scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba.

Soon after Flight 825 took off, a group of ZIPRA guerrillas hit it on its starboard wing with a Soviet-made Strela-2 surface-to-air infrared homing missile, critically damaging the aircraft and forcing an emergency landing. An attempted belly landing in a cotton field just west of Karoi was foiled by a ditch, which caused the plane to cartwheel and break up. Of the 52 passengers and four crew, 38 died in the crash; the insurgents then approached the wreckage, rounded up the 10 survivors they could see and massacred them with automatic gunfire. Three passengers survived by hiding in the surrounding bush, while a further five lived because they had gone to look for water before the guerrillas arrived.

ZIPRA leader Joshua Nkomo publicly claimed responsibility for shooting down the Hunyani in an interview with the BBC's Today programme the next day, saying the aircraft had been used for military purposes, but denied that his men had killed survivors on the ground. Most Rhodesians, both black and white,^[4] saw the attack as an act of terrorism.^[5] A fierce Rhodesian backlash followed against enemy strongholds and increased racial tension. Reports viewing the attack negatively appeared in international journals such as Time magazine, but there was almost no acknowledgement of it by overseas governments, much to the Rhodesian government's indignation.

Talks between Nkomo and Prime Minister Ian Smith, which had been progressing promisingly, were immediately suspended by the Rhodesians, with Smith calling Nkomo a "monster".^[6] On 10 September, Smith announced the extension of martial law over selected areas. The Rhodesian Security Forces launched several retaliatory strikes into Zambia and Mozambique over the following months, attacking both ZIPRA and its rival, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). The attack on ZIPRA in particular brought great controversy as many of those killed were refugees camping in and around guerrilla positions.^[7] In February 1979, ZIPRA shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 827, another civilian flight, in an almost identical incident.

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