List of airliner shootdown incidents
This chronological list shows instances of airliners being brought down by gunfire or missile attacks – including during wartime – rather than by terrorist bombings or sabotage of an airplane.
[1] On 24 August 1938 – during the Second Sino-Japanese War – the Kweilin, a DC-2 jointly operated by China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and Pan American World Airways, carrying 18 passengers and crew, was forced down by Japanese aircraft in Chinese territory just north of Hong Kong.
[3] The Kaleva (registered OH-ALL) was a civilian Junkers Ju 52-3/mge passenger aircraft operated by Finnish carrier Aero O/Y which was shot down by two Soviet Ilyushin DB-3 bombers on 14 June 1940, over the Baltic Sea while en route from Tallinn, Estonia to Helsinki, Finland.
The bombers opened fire with their machine guns and badly damaged the Kaleva, causing it to ditch into seawater in the Gulf of Finland, a few kilometers northeast of Keri lighthouse.
[8] On 29 October 1940, the same DC-2 involved in the previous shootdown incident as Kweilin, now renamed Chungking, operated by CNAC, was destroyed by Japanese fighters at Changyi Airfield, Yunnan, China, after it made a scheduled landing and was coming to a stop.
La Verrier, an Air France SNCAC NC.223.4 mail plane, disappeared on the first leg of a flight from Marseille to Damascus with stopovers in Bizerte and Beirut on November 24, 1940.
No wreckage has been recovered, the plane radioed they were hit by machine-gun fire before disappearing; it has been theorized they were shot down in the nearby Battle of Cape Spartivento that occurred on the same day.
[19] G-AGEJ, a BOAC Lockheed 18-40 Lodestar, was shot down by a Junkers Ju 88 of Luftwaffe 10/NJG 3 piloted by lieutenant Werner Speidel on April 4, 1943, 50 kilometers (31.3 miles) NW of Skagen, on a passenger flight from Stockholm to Saint Andrews.
[25] The Gripen (registered SE-BAG) was a Douglas DC-3 which was attacked by a German Junkers Ju 88 fighter-bomber over the coast of the island of Hållö, Sweden on 22 October 1943 while flying a scheduled passenger flight from Aberdeen to Stockholm.
[28] Friedrich Dahmen (D-ASHE), a Junkers Ju-52/3m of Deutsche Lufthansa, had to make a forced landing in Komárom County, Hungary, after being attacked by British Mosquito fighters during a passenger flight on October 17, 1944.
[29] D-ARHW, a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 of Deutsche Lufthansa, was shot down by a German patrol boat at 10:25 on November 29, 1944, off Målkläppen, Sweden, on a passenger flight from Berlin to Stockholm.
[37] F-BEIB, a Douglas C-47 of Société des Transports Aériens d'Extrême-Orient (STAEO), was shot down by communist guerrillas during a passenger flight take off in Phan Thiet on May 4, 1952.
[39] On July 27, 1953, an Ilyushin Il-12 (registration unknown) of Aeroflot was shot at in North Korean airspace flying from Port Arthur to Vladivostok and crashed onto Chinese territory at 12:30, killing all 21 occupants.
[40][41] VR-HEU, a Douglas C-54 Skymaster airliner operated by Cathay Pacific Airways[42] en route from Bangkok to Hong Kong on 23 July 1954, was shot down by People's Liberation Army Air Force Lavochkin La-11 fighters off the coast of Hainan Island; 10 of the 19 on board died.
[46][47] TI-1022, a Curtiss C-46 Commando of Aerolineas Nacionales, left San Jose, Costa Rica, at 06:21 on June 1, 1959, for a farm airstrip near Volcán, Panama, to carry a meat shipment to Curaçao.
[51][52] F-BELV, a Boeing S.307B-1 Stratoliner of Compagnie Internationale de Transports Civil Aériens (CITCA) operating for the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC), disappeared near Hanoi on October 18, 1965, with all 13 onboard presumed dead.
In 1996, a study by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade concluded the plane had likely been shot down by a North Vietnamese military unit, accidentally or deliberately.
At 10:30 on 21 February 1973, the Boeing 727 operating the flight left Tripoli, but became lost due to a combination of bad weather and equipment failure over northern Egypt around 13:44 (local time).
It entered Israeli-controlled airspace over the Sinai Peninsula, where was intercepted by two Israeli Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighters, refused to land, and was shot down.
On 30 September 1975, the aircraft operating the route, a Tupolev Tu-154 of Malév Hungarian Airlines, on its final approach for landing, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea just off the coast of Lebanon.
[63] On 27 June 1980 a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-15 operated by Itavia broke up mid-air and crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea near the island of Ustica, while en route from Bologna to Palermo, Italy.
[66][67] On 18 July 1981 Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense's Canadair CL-44 commercial cargo aircraft involved in the clandestine weapons supplies under the Iran-Contra affair was taken down by a Soviet Airforce Su-15 by a ram attack.
[71] On November 25, 1985, in Angola during the Angolan Civil War, an Aeroflot Antonov An-12 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, while operating a cargo flight from Cuito Cuanavale to Luanda, allegedly by South African Special Forces; all 21 people on board were killed.
[73] On 14 October 1987, a Lockheed L-100 Hercules (registered HB-ILF), owned by the Swiss company Zimex Aviation and operated on behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was shot down about four minutes after departing Cuito airport, Angola.
Two out of four passengers on board were killed, American Christian missionary Roni Bowers and her infant daughter Charity, while the pilot Kevin Donaldson was severely wounded.
Although the immediate suspicion was of a terrorist attack, American sources proved that the plane was hit by a S-200 surface-to-air missile, fired from the Crimean Peninsula during a joint Ukrainian-Russian military exercise, and this was confirmed by the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee.
[89] On 22 November 2003, a DHL Airbus A300-200F cargo aircraft (registered OO-DLL) was struck on the left wing by a surface-to-air missile shortly after takeoff from Baghdad bound for Muharraq, Bahrain.
Witnesses, including a Shabelle reporter, claim they saw the plane being shot down, and Belarus has initiated an anti-terrorist investigation, but Somalia insists the crash was accidental.
On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737-800 (registered UR-PSR) operating the route was shot down by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shortly after takeoff from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 people on board.
[99] On 4 May 2020, an African Express Airways Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia on an air charter flight carrying pandemic relief supplies crashed on approach to an airstrip in Berdale, Somalia, after being fired upon by Ethiopian Ground Forces.
