Air Rhodesia Flight 825

Air Rhodesia Flight 825

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

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 scored a direct hit 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. The majority of Rhodesians, both black and white, saw the attack as an act of terrorism. A fierce white Rhodesian backlash followed against perceived enemies, with many whites becoming violently resentful and suspicious of blacks in general, even though few black Rhodesians supported attacks of this kind. 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.