The Gander Airliner Crash: An Unsolved Tragedy

On December 11, 1985, the 101st Airborne unit of the U.S. Army departed Cairo, Egypt, aboard a chartered Arrow Air DC-8. They were returning home to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, after a six-month peacekeeping mission in the Sinai. After a stop in Germany, they landed at Gander Airport in Newfoundland, Canada, for refueling. Shortly after takeoff, the DC-8 crashed unexpectedly, claiming the lives of 248 soldiers. Wreckage was scattered over an area of nearly a quarter mile.

Almost immediately, a terrorist organization known as Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. However, U.S. Army officials quickly dismissed the possibility of terrorist involvement. Later, a Canadian Board of Inquiry stated that ice on the plane's wings had caused the crash.

However, four out of the nine members of the board publicly disagreed, asserting that ice alone couldn't have caused the crash. Aeronautical Engineer Les Filotas, one of the dissenting board members, stated:

"There was certainly some kind of explosion. A small explosion that disabled the control system. But what caused that explosion, whether it was sabotage or the accidental detonation of some kind of military equipment carried against regulations, we really don't have a better idea than we had in 1988."

Wreckage suggests an explosion inside the plane:

To the four dissenting board members, the crash itself appeared highly irregular. In typical takeoff crashes, large sections of the plane remain intact, and many passengers can survive. However, at Gander, according to Les Filotas, the wreckage was extremely fragmented, and there were no survivors:

"A normal kind of takeoff accident can be quite serious and can involve a fire, but basically, the aircraft isn't completely destroyed."

The U.S. Government vehemently denied that explosives or ammunition were carried as cargo. However, eyewitness reports from Cairo airport contradicted the government's claim. Witnesses stated that several large wooden boxes were loaded onto the airplane, suspected to contain classified weapons. Harvey Day, one of the rescue workers, described what he saw at the Gander crash site:

"I decided to walk down to see what was in this area. And I saw five large wooden boxes. They were black, a bit burnt from the fire, and I saw things like missiles and little metal boxes that looked like ammunition boxes. And it was all piled up very neatly into this cordoned-off area."

Harvey Day also witnessed an unusual pile of wreckage that was burning uncontrollably. Firefighters were attempting to extinguish it with water, but as soon as the water was removed, the fire reignited:

"And the minute he took the water away, it just flared back up again. And he said, 'We have to do this until it burns out or it cools down to the point where we can remove what's there.'"

Within weeks, Harvey and several other rescue workers began experiencing health problems that resembled radiation poisoning. Concerns grew among the rescue workers, as reported by Robert Cox, the president of the Union of Canadian Transport Employees:

"I think we had over thirty members who described some type of malady or sickness as a result of the crash. They range from liver problems to what people thought were heart attacks and just general illnesses. And this is what was checked out, and it got to be rather scary."

The U.S. government allegedly sealed its records of the crash for seventy years, although various government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Transportation Safety Board, deny the existence of such records. Doug Phillips, the father of one of the crash victims, expressed his doubts:

"The files on the Gander incident would not be sealed for seventy years if it was simply ice. We know that there had to be something politically embarrassing that could have been very harmful to the Reagan administration that had to be covered up."

Zona Phillips, who lost her stepson in the crash, questioned whether her family member died protecting the country or due to the government protecting itself: "As one family member put it, she wants to know if her family member died protecting this country or if he died because our government was protecting itself."

Strange behavior by U.S. government investigators added to the mystery. The crash site was bulldozed within three months, an unusually swift action. While downed airplanes are typically reassembled for crash analysis, authorities quickly buried the wreckage from the Gander site in a dump.

Dr. Douglas Phillips and his wife Zona, who lost their son in the crash, formed an organization called Families for Truth about Gander. They requested several pieces of the wreckage, which the government surprisingly sent to them. An expert hired to analyze the scraps claimed that the edges were bent outwards, indicating an internal explosion. According to Doug Phillips, this meant only one thing:

"The airplane exploded in mid-air and then went down and hit the ground with a gigantic fireball when the fuel ignited. But there's no doubt in my mind that there was a fire or explosion while the plane was still in flight."

Dr. Phillips uncovered one final compelling fact: Autopsies revealed that many of the deceased soldiers had a significant amount of carbon monoxide in their bodies:

"The toxicology report showed that the victims had indeed breathed in carbon monoxide prior to the plane hitting the ground and exploding. This had to be from a detonation, a fire, or explosion onboard the aircraft."

In 1990, Congress held a hearing on the Gander disaster, criticizing the government's investigation but failing to push for a new one. The families of the soldiers who perished in Gander continue to wonder why and how their loved ones truly lost their lives.