Pilot fatigue, not Cold War conspiracy, likely behind crash that killed UN chief, experts say
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UNITED NATIONS — Fifty years after the plane carrying U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold crashed in the African bush during a peace mission to Congo, killing all aboard, the accident remains one of the Cold War’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
Three investigations, including one by the U.N., failed to explain the plane’s plunge, feeding conspiracy theories involving superpower rivalries. But aviation experts now say the flight most likely fell victim to a danger foremost in the mind of today’s air crash investigators, but unknown 50 years ago: pilot fatigue.
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As an obscure Swedish technocrat, Hammarskjold had been an unexpected choice to become the second head of the United Nations in 1953. But he proved surprisingly forceful, personally negotiating the release of American soldiers captured in the Korean War, sending U.N. peacekeepers to defuse the Suez Canal crisis and trying to resolve the civil war in Congo, which had just won independence from Belgium.
He is still considered the most effective secretary-general the U.N. has ever had. And he is the only person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously.
In the course of his work, though, he angered many governments. Congo was a land in chaos that 20,000 U.N. troops were trying to stitch back together. But several countries coveted the mineral wealth of the country’s breakaway province of Katanga, and feared the Congolese government would nationalize those resources if the country were reunited.
And so, when the chartered Douglas DC-6B airliner flying Hammarskjold went down on Sept. 18, 1961., a slew of conspiracy theories emerged.
Did the Americans have Hammarskjold killed? Perhaps Belgian agents sabotaged the plane, or maybe British fighters shot it down? Each country had a stake in Congo’s mineral resources, and stood to lose if a peace deal was struck. Other theories pointed the finger at the Soviets, who accused Hammarskjold of complicity in the execution of Moscow-backed Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba.
Hammarskjold’s plane went down just as he was trying to negotiate an agreement between the government of Congo and Katanga. The wreckage wasn’t found until 15 hours after the crash, just a few miles (kilometers) short of Ndola Airport in Northern Rhodesia — today’s Zambia. Harold Julian, a bodyguard, was the only survivor among the 15 people on board, but he died three days later.
Three inquires, two by Rhodesia and one by the U.N., failed to determine the cause of the crash. No evidence of explosives or damage from bullets or shells was found.
But experts now say pilot fatigue almost surely played a significant role. Although not conclusive, their findings have not previously been reported.
“By using modern fatigue models, we can show that the schedule that this crew flew on the day of the accident would have made them tired to a point of impairment when the accident occurred,” said William Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation.
Over the past 15 years, a dozen fatal crashes have been blamed on pilot fatigue. Safety experts compare its effects to drunk driving. Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the European Union’s air safety agency are currently drawing up new, stricter limits on the hours pilots can work daily.
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