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The Ndola Crash and the Death of Dag Hammarskjöld

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Bengt Rösiö
Bengt Rösiö
Affiliation:
Eskadervägen 22, Täby, Sweden*
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Extract

When Dag Hammarskjöld flew to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) on 17 September 1961 it was to meet Moïse Tshombe, the self-styled President of secessionist Katanga, in order to bring about a ceasefire to the fighting that was going on between his soldiers and those of the United Nations, especially in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi). One of the more spectacular components of diese hostilities was a French-built Fouga Magister, which had strafed some unprotected U.N. positions from the air, and journalists quickly located the Belgian pilot as a ‘Major’ Delin, depicted as a kind of modern ‘Lone Ranger’ defying the world community. The importance of ‘the little Fouga’ soon got blown out of all proportions, and when Hammarskjöld's DC-6B, nicknamed ‘Albertina’, took off from Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) it was decided to take a roundabout route in order to avoid being attacked by the Fouga. After the Secretary-General's plane had crashed, the press jumped to the conclusion that it had been shot down by the Fouga, and U.N. spokesmen confirmed that Ndola was within its range.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1993 , pp. 661 - 671
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Gibbs, David N., ‘Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Congo Crisis of 1960–1: a reinterpretation’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 31, 1, 03 1993, p. 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 When the U.N. Commission later asked Alport about the telegram he had received, via the Commonwealth Office in London, from the British Ambassador in Léopoldville, Derek Riches, he let the counsel for Her Majesty's Government explain that this was of no aviation significance since it merely contained ‘diplomatic gossip’.