On September 15th, 1974, at Phan Rang Air Base, owned by the United States Air Force and the Republic of Vietnam Air Force, a telephone operator saw a passenger plane descending at a dangerously steep angle and exploded on impact with the end of the runway.
"It was clear that the pilot had lost control of the plane, it was not a normal maneuver to land" he added. Not long after, the flight was identified as Flight 706.
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| A Boeing 727, similar to the one in the incident |
Air Vietnam Flight 706 took off at 10:05 am that day,
carrying 75 people including 67 passengers and 8 crew members. According to the
regular schedule, the plane took off at Da Nang Airport and landed at Tan Son
Nhat Airport in the afternoon of the same day. But that day, it was clear that
the flight could not reach Saigon.
According to the Government-run radio of the Republic
of Vietnam, just 36 minutes after the plane took off, a man in his 40s, wearing
the uniform of the ARVN Rangers entered the cockpit and asked to be flown out
to Hanoi. His name was later identified as Le Duc Tan.
Le Duc Tan is a member of the ARVN Rangers and was
demoted a few days ago for stealing two cars in Da Nang. On the morning of September 15th, 1974, he passed the security checkpoints at the airport smoothly.
For unknown reasons, he asked to be flown to Hanoi, some theories suggest that
he wanted to be granted asylum in North Vietnam.
According to the New York Times, one version of the story recorded that the pilot of the flight, Lieutenant Nguyen Thanh Lich, told the hijacker that the plane would have to refuel at Phan Rang before flying to the North. However, perhaps because the hijacker feared that the pilot's intention when landing on a military base was to give them a chance to capture him, so as soon as the plane approached the Phan Rang airbase's runway, Le Duc Tan detonated 2 grenades he was carrying, causing the plane to lose control. Another report said that there was a shooting inside the plane, but it was not confirmed.
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| Phan Rang Airbase in 1968, the site of the crash is on the right of the photo |
The plane crashed at the end of the runway at about 11 a.m., no one was there so there was no casualty on the ground. But all 75 people on board, including the hijacker and 74 others, were killed. To date, it still remains the largest mass murder committed by a single individual in Vietnam.
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| The wreckage of the plane, still image from this video |
After the incident, the government of the Republic of
Vietnam tried to tighten military discipline, but that was never possible as
the government was increasingly in crisis, and it collapsed just more than half
a year after the incident. Airport security has also been tightened worldwide,
but it has not been able to prevent similar attacks on Korean Air Flight 858 in
1987 and Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.