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Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't understand you stories of things we
Speaker 1: simply don't know the answer too. Hey everybody, and welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course,
Speaker 1: as always, joined by Devin and Joe, and this week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a mystery. Of course, because
Speaker 1: by the time this episode comes out, there will be
Speaker 1: some presidential stuff going on. So I figured we'd talk
Speaker 1: about a president who happens to be in a different
Speaker 1: country ex President and a dead president prime minister president.
Speaker 1: You know, he's always referred to as president most of
Speaker 1: the time, so I'm gonna call him a president. Okay,
Speaker 1: so not the guy who swam away from wait, from
Speaker 1: the ocean. He was trying to get away from that ocean.
Speaker 1: It caught up. Now this week we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the death of Mozambican President Samara Michelle, who died
Speaker 1: along with thirty three other people when the presidential plane
Speaker 1: which was a tuple of t U one three four
Speaker 1: A three crashed into a South African hillside on October nine,
Speaker 1: six um and it's believed by many people to have
Speaker 1: been an assassination, which was executed by intentionally crashing the plane.
Speaker 1: President at all. Before we get into the story, I
Speaker 1: do want to say that this is a listener suggestion.
Speaker 1: This is an ash story. Oh yeah, we haven't done
Speaker 1: a way Ashes stories in a long time. You haven't.
Speaker 1: And we haven't even gotten through half of his suggestion.
Speaker 1: I know. I didn't even intend. I didn't realize this
Speaker 1: was an suggestion until I got to it. And by
Speaker 1: the way, it's another suggestion. We're like through the first thirty. No,
Speaker 1: we love it ash um. Okay, So before we get
Speaker 1: into the story the crash, we do need to cover
Speaker 1: some background information on both Michelle as well as some
Speaker 1: other people and the area, because there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of turmoil in the region and that plays in it
Speaker 1: plays into the story. So first, let's start with the
Speaker 1: country of Mozambique, which is where some more Michelle was
Speaker 1: the president of Bob Dylan wrote a song about it.
Speaker 1: Did he really came out in the seventies, I think
Speaker 1: it was right after the decolonization and it was taken
Speaker 1: over by Marxist. Okay, because for a second I was
Speaker 1: thinking you were talking about there was a time where
Speaker 1: Bob Marley had gone to the same region, but that
Speaker 1: was for another country which suddenly I don't have the
Speaker 1: name of, but I know it's further along in my
Speaker 1: script and I'll call it out when we get there. Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're your geography, isn't that great with with South
Speaker 1: Africa and not the country, the area the southern part
Speaker 1: of Africa, Because that I was just had a moment
Speaker 1: where I was like, uh, you keep saying the beak
Speaker 1: is the country, but then you're saying in South Africa.
Speaker 1: Now I'm confused, So the southern region of Africa not
Speaker 1: South Africa. Correct. If you are familiar with or not
Speaker 1: familiar with it, you will look at a map and
Speaker 1: on the very bottom of the tip you will see
Speaker 1: the country of South Africa, and to the right of
Speaker 1: it on the coast is Mozambique, just directly to the
Speaker 1: north eastern side, and then there's a small country sandwich
Speaker 1: in between South Africa and Mozambique, which is called Swaziland.
Speaker 1: So that's where it is, and it's a Swazilands and
Speaker 1: its bitsy teeny tiny country. It kind of sandwiched. It's
Speaker 1: completely surrounded, its surround really landlocked. But yeah by those
Speaker 1: two countries, surrounded on three sides by South Africa and
Speaker 1: one side. Yeah. Yeah, for about four hundred years, Mozambique
Speaker 1: was Portuguese colony. And okay, so I got a safer second.
Speaker 1: I didn't really I knew Portugal head colonies. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that it's still had colonies this far into the
Speaker 1: modern era for some reason. I mean, it's just a
Speaker 1: failing on my part for from a historical perspective apparently,
Speaker 1: but I was like, it's a Portuguese colony. I thought
Speaker 1: the Portuguese lost all our colonies like two hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: We know not everything, but I mean most places that
Speaker 1: had colonies still have colonies. Is that not accurate? My
Speaker 1: problem is is that I'm used to the British, who
Speaker 1: you know, returned all of their colonies primarily or most
Speaker 1: of them. They they don't have, but like two colonies anymore.
Speaker 1: It feels like and I know that's not the right number.
Speaker 1: Please don't send an email. I know too isn't the
Speaker 1: correct number, but there was a lot of turmoil in
Speaker 1: the last forty or fifty years and they have of
Speaker 1: those countries of all returned to their own governance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in some fashion. Mostly most of the eclonization took place
Speaker 1: in the sixties, you know, a few held onto the seventies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this was a Portuguese colony, and as Joe
Speaker 1: was just talking about, in the sixties there was a
Speaker 1: lot of revolt against the Portuguese government. A grilla liberation
Speaker 1: group became very active starting around four and they were
Speaker 1: openly fighting the Portuguese government. The name of this group
Speaker 1: is the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a mouthful. So thankfully everybody uses the acronym
Speaker 1: for LIMO, which is much easier to say, I do too.
Speaker 1: For LIMO fought against Portugal and made progress towards their
Speaker 1: goal of taking back the country, slowly but surely. One
Speaker 1: thing that really helped them is that they weren't the
Speaker 1: only colony struggling to do this, and there was actually
Speaker 1: liberally Asia movements in Angola, Portuguese Guinea and as as
Speaker 1: well as Mozambique, and in nineteen seventy four, after fighting
Speaker 1: wars on multiple fronts, there was a coup in Portugal
Speaker 1: which brought down the existing government and it was replaced
Speaker 1: by one that was totally willing to grant independence to
Speaker 1: the colonies. So the short version is Mozambique granted its
Speaker 1: independence in nineteen seventy five and for Limo, being the
Speaker 1: main force, took power. They became the governance at that time,
Speaker 1: and they quite quickly kicked out the two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand Portuguese citizens who were living in country, so
Speaker 1: they were literally taking everything back. A lot of African
Speaker 1: countries came to regret though, Uh there was there was
Speaker 1: positives and there was negatives. They there they did leave
Speaker 1: a pretty significant gap in terms of commerce, and uh
Speaker 1: there was some other areas that that really struggled because
Speaker 1: of it. Men in the they most of them have
Speaker 1: overcome that. It took them time. That's as it always does. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they when you're a colony, right, all of
Speaker 1: your infrastructure is run. But the power colonizational power is
Speaker 1: that it's much easier to say yeah, um, so I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as they say you know what,
Speaker 1: you're cut off it's like people who know how to
Speaker 1: run the machinery. Well, it's you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: you know, being like a college kid and getting cut
Speaker 1: off from your parents all of a sudden, you're you
Speaker 1: have no idea what you're doing and you have to
Speaker 1: kind of fend for yourself. And it's a great analogy.
Speaker 1: It's really hard, That's exactly what it is. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: luckily most of these places have really at least kind
Speaker 1: of thing. They've grown up to use your college kid analogy.
Speaker 1: They've grown up. I have to say, the of all
Speaker 1: the all the countries out there that were forward colonies,
Speaker 1: the ones that are consistently doing the best are the
Speaker 1: ones that were colonized by the British. You know, I
Speaker 1: mean they really are. That's accurate. Actually, yes it is.
Speaker 1: And you look at like you know, Believes to India,
Speaker 1: to Canada, America to where is that that other place?
Speaker 1: That other place, yeah, that other place. Yeah. Even in Africa,
Speaker 1: the African countries that were colonized by the Brits, they're
Speaker 1: doing great. I wonder if there is a better access
Speaker 1: strategy that happened there. Uh, you know what, I don't know,
Speaker 1: And I think that's a long road for us to
Speaker 1: run down. Yeah, let's let's not go there. Let's let's
Speaker 1: keep focused on Mosbeak here because we're still talking about them.
Speaker 1: Yea boswa is the country got it, okay. So when
Speaker 1: for Limo came into power as the ruling government, they
Speaker 1: made the entire state a Marxist lenisis is that how
Speaker 1: you say that in Leninist thank you adding an extra
Speaker 1: ele in there? A Leninist Marxist Leninist political organization, a
Speaker 1: real formula for success. And so what that meant is
Speaker 1: that they set up a socialist state for its part.
Speaker 1: The Soviet unions obviously very happy about this. They have
Speaker 1: a new friend in town. But that didn't really didn't
Speaker 1: really make everybody else in the area happy. But we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a second. Um Michelle Samoura Michelle,
Speaker 1: he was involved with for Limo from its beginnings. He
Speaker 1: very quickly rose to power through the organization, such so
Speaker 1: that in nineventy he was elected the leader of the organization.
Speaker 1: So in seventy five, when the Portuguese left and for
Speaker 1: Limo stepped into the government, choose he was kind of
Speaker 1: the natural, the natural person to take over, and he
Speaker 1: didn't it wasn't. There's a whole bunch of backstory here.
Speaker 1: He wasn't immediately just the number one guy, but we're
Speaker 1: just kind of shortening this to keep it simple. And
Speaker 1: the important thing he was president. He was president. And
Speaker 1: the other important thing to know is that almost immediately
Speaker 1: there was detractors who were not happy with him or
Speaker 1: for Limo, and a counter group or counter movement began,
Speaker 1: and that was the Mozambican National Resistance, which in the
Speaker 1: beginning went by the acronym of just M and R.
Speaker 1: But later on they change their name. And this name
Speaker 1: is sort of recent, but we'll use it just because
Speaker 1: you're gonna see it most of the reading is Rhanamo
Speaker 1: and they opposed the communist based government and they actually
Speaker 1: began a civil war in nineteen seventy six. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't do. So you can see country gets it's it's
Speaker 1: independence and then immediately goes to war with itself and
Speaker 1: the year later, like that's not a good thing. Listen,
Speaker 1: it's just the truncated version. They're just getting all of
Speaker 1: the crap out of the way. They're doing it fast,
Speaker 1: and then you know, they get that out of their
Speaker 1: system and then they have a great path to become
Speaker 1: a really productive, amazing country. There you go that that
Speaker 1: must have been the plan. I'm not sure. I didn't
Speaker 1: look up any stats on how productive and amazing they are.
Speaker 1: They actually there's been a lot of political changes in
Speaker 1: that country over the last forty years. But it's only
Speaker 1: been forty years, right, I mean they've only run their
Speaker 1: country for forty years, where when we fourty years out
Speaker 1: like not. Um, So let's keep going on. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the area. So we've
Speaker 1: got Michelle, he's now in power. We talked about the neighbors,
Speaker 1: which were South Africa and Rhodesia, which is modern day Zimbabwe.
Speaker 1: By the way, Rhodesia was the one that I was
Speaker 1: thinking of that Marley went to that he was he
Speaker 1: went there, did a big concert during their whole run.
Speaker 1: Also talked about Rhodesia when we talked about the Lake
Speaker 1: City Quiepels did we Yeah, the Rhodesian Army. You're right,
Speaker 1: we did stop coming together. But I think we have
Speaker 1: to go to Rhodesia. That's what is telling this country
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist anymore. Okay, So South Africa and Rhodesia,
Speaker 1: who were both under white control, do not like this
Speaker 1: country that is now a socialist state. They you know,
Speaker 1: they're not fans of communism, and they begin to funnel
Speaker 1: support and money and weapons and shelter to the folks
Speaker 1: that are involved in Renamo, And uh, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: not very very cool to Michelle. He he doesn't like that.
Speaker 1: He actually has a lot of very stern words to
Speaker 1: say to both governments for that, but then again for
Speaker 1: his interfering their politics too. Yeah, because he was he
Speaker 1: was at the same time doing the same thing for
Speaker 1: the a n C, which is the African National Council,
Speaker 1: which eventually would take over when what's that African National
Speaker 1: Congress what did I call it? Council? Thank you over?
Speaker 1: But they would, you know, they would be the ones
Speaker 1: who would take over when the apartheid government in South
Speaker 1: Africa would eventually crumble several years later, more than several
Speaker 1: it's the along a long time. I meant several years
Speaker 1: after the death of Michelle. I apologize, I'm mixing my
Speaker 1: timeline there. That's my own fault. I think it was
Speaker 1: ninety four. So yeah, they did. They struggled against that
Speaker 1: for a long time. Okay, but let's jump ahead in time,
Speaker 1: We're gonna jump ahead. We've got a little bit of
Speaker 1: the backstory of the region. Let's jump to six. There
Speaker 1: was a meeting of the heads of state of several
Speaker 1: different African nations being held on the nineteenth of October
Speaker 1: six in Mambola, Zambia, and the goal was to, using
Speaker 1: air quotes here, encourage the dictator of Zaire to stop
Speaker 1: supporting the insurgent groups that were fighting in Angola at
Speaker 1: the time. As I understand it from the reading, Michelle's
Speaker 1: motivation to go there was also to help quote unquote
Speaker 1: encourage the other leaders there to stop support being Namo. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes sense. Right. You go to a
Speaker 1: place and you say, hey, listen, yeah, I'll support you
Speaker 1: in this if you support me in that. Yeah. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a given take. That's way this works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what diplomacy is. I think it. Maybe diplomacy is
Speaker 1: basically threats. That's why you how you know you're an American? Okay,
Speaker 1: So Michelle, along with a bunch of his staffers and journalists,
Speaker 1: they flew to this meeting on the presidential plane, which,
Speaker 1: as I had said in the beginning, was a Tupa
Speaker 1: Lev TU one thirty four eight ash three, which is
Speaker 1: a Soviet design, And you don't say I do with
Speaker 1: a name like that, you do. It was a Soviet
Speaker 1: design and manufactured twin engine jet laner. The first thing
Speaker 1: I did when I heard it started going to the stories.
Speaker 1: I looked at the crash history of the Tupi Lev
Speaker 1: and actually that's not as bad as I thought would be. No,
Speaker 1: but it's not the safest plane in the world. It
Speaker 1: turns out to be not the worst either. This type
Speaker 1: of plane, though it had been around for at that
Speaker 1: time twenty years, and this particular plane had been in
Speaker 1: service with the government for six years. So it's a
Speaker 1: modern plane with the modern navigational equipment of the time.
Speaker 1: A telegraph did not, but it did have a fax machine.
Speaker 1: But something to note, uh this is I always found
Speaker 1: this little strange is that the crew were actually Russian.
Speaker 1: They were employed by the USSR and they operated the
Speaker 1: plane for the Mozambican government, which I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: Something about that seems a little odd to me. Well,
Speaker 1: they probably wanted the Russians to be changing the tapes
Speaker 1: and the bugging devices. Yeah, I mean, I guess they
Speaker 1: kind of yeah. I mean it a little bit makes
Speaker 1: sense to me. I can see it. It's a way
Speaker 1: to hear, we'll give you this plane, you know, for
Speaker 1: a discount, and then we'll give you a crew, and
Speaker 1: let's pay for the crew. I mean, you're leasing out
Speaker 1: the crew at that point. I get it, but it
Speaker 1: always just seemed a little odd to have to be
Speaker 1: leasing the crew, right, I mean, if they could just
Speaker 1: pay them directly to or the USSR they were they
Speaker 1: were Soviet employees. Yeah, I mean if the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: is really just trying to play that role of like
Speaker 1: big brother, like, yes, we will take you to encourage
Speaker 1: them to continue the Soviet way or a socialist way.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those things they do, is
Speaker 1: kind of a small gesture. And then also you know,
Speaker 1: get tons of intel and all that stuff because they're
Speaker 1: bugging the plane. As Jeff said, um so well, let's
Speaker 1: uh so enough about the crew. We're gonna go to
Speaker 1: We're going back to the date of the nineteenth of
Speaker 1: October of that six The meeting ended and because of
Speaker 1: Michelle had as the reading always says, he had an
Speaker 1: important meeting the next day, which it turned out was
Speaker 1: actually his wife's birthday, though a lot of people say
Speaker 1: that he also had some other quote unquote really important
Speaker 1: meetings that he had to attend. Let's be honest, you're
Speaker 1: a married man. Yeah, it's his wife's birthday. It's at
Speaker 1: a very important meeting to be there for. So well,
Speaker 1: she was with him, So they had they had gone
Speaker 1: to Umbala, and and she had gone with him, and
Speaker 1: so the rather than they've been offered to stay overnight,
Speaker 1: she probably didn't really want to. Yeah, they didn't. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to, so he said, no, we're going to
Speaker 1: go home today during the day though. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: what happens here is, uh, they decided that they're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead. They're gonna fly home to Maputo City, which
Speaker 1: is in the capital of Mozambique. And the plane leaves
Speaker 1: at six forty at night, and it takes kind of
Speaker 1: this serpentine path, but it flies basically southeast towards Maputo,
Speaker 1: and the weather is clear and the flights estimated to
Speaker 1: take about three hours just just under Actually from here,
Speaker 1: we know what happened because of the fact that we
Speaker 1: what were recovered were the cockpit voice recorders, the CVR
Speaker 1: and the flight data recorder or the black boxes everybody
Speaker 1: likes to call them. And all those bugs at the
Speaker 1: Russians had placed and none of the bugs at the
Speaker 1: Russians had placed. Um, so we've got we've got all
Speaker 1: that data. At nine o'clock that night, the so this
Speaker 1: is they've obviously left and they're flying home. At nine
Speaker 1: o'clock that night, the crew contacted Maputo air traffic control
Speaker 1: to let them know that they're about forty minutes out.
Speaker 1: And then sixteen minutes later, by the way, it was
Speaker 1: not but it was a low it was a small
Speaker 1: moon if I remember right, and the moon had not
Speaker 1: yet risen. The moon wouldn't rise until shortly after the crash,
Speaker 1: like literally ten minutes after the crash, what moon there
Speaker 1: was would have come up, so that that would have
Speaker 1: maybe helped things here. Like I said, they contact the
Speaker 1: air traffic control, they say they're about forty minutes out.
Speaker 1: Sixteen minutes later they contact them again, uh, and let
Speaker 1: them know that they're ready to begin their descent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty five minutes something like that. Yeah, it's at this
Speaker 1: point that I should explain something about how the plane
Speaker 1: was navigating to Maputo, and that is that they were
Speaker 1: using a vhs omnidirectional radio range finder, which we're from here.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call a v O R because that's
Speaker 1: much easier that actually ranged that just a beacon. It's
Speaker 1: a beacon, but that's that's part of the name in
Speaker 1: a nutshell with the v v O R is is
Speaker 1: it's a signal that's broadcast from a location that allows
Speaker 1: the pilot to determine their relation to that beacon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's because there's a phase matched pair of signals
Speaker 1: that are being sent and through that match or mismatch,
Speaker 1: they can tell how far they are off in a
Speaker 1: three sixty degree circle. Is it like sonar um? No,
Speaker 1: not exactly. Here's how it works. Yeah, no, and believe me,
Speaker 1: I I got a hold of our experts. Thank you
Speaker 1: to all of our experts for their how up with this?
Speaker 1: I really hope this makes sense. Here's what happens is
Speaker 1: there is a signal I believe it's a pulsing signal
Speaker 1: that is constantly being sent out like a pin at
Speaker 1: the same time, and that's being sent out in all
Speaker 1: directions at the same time. At the same time, there
Speaker 1: is a second signal being sent out. And in the
Speaker 1: old days it used to be from a antenna that
Speaker 1: was actually a physically rotating antenna, and it would rotate
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty times a minute. But it is then
Speaker 1: also put in a directional fashion shooting out that signal
Speaker 1: so that they both start in line at true north.
Speaker 1: And so if it then rotates ninety degrees to the east,
Speaker 1: it's a quarter out of sinc due south, it's now
Speaker 1: it's now half out of sink and then three quarters
Speaker 1: and then they sink back up because the new rotation starts.
Speaker 1: I hope that makes sense. Basically, it's a spiral on
Speaker 1: top of another circle. Is how works. It allows them
Speaker 1: to figure out where they are in relation to it.
Speaker 1: It probably makes sense enough for it to matter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other thing to remember is these are at
Speaker 1: the airports what they're heading for, and other airports have
Speaker 1: them also, but on different radio frequencies. Correct, they are
Speaker 1: not set on the same frequency. That would be confusing well.
Speaker 1: And and the thing is is that they also send
Speaker 1: out back in the day, they would send out a
Speaker 1: Morris code signal at the same time that would say
Speaker 1: essentially this is Maputu Airport, over and over and over
Speaker 1: and over, so that you didn't tune into it and
Speaker 1: start to fly to it and then realize you were
Speaker 1: going to the wrong airport. You could pick that code
Speaker 1: up right away, but would you use other airports signals
Speaker 1: to navigate off of, like knowing, hey, we're two hours
Speaker 1: into the flight, we should be passing this city. I
Speaker 1: under if I understand it correctly, Yes, okay. It is
Speaker 1: a method of navigation, not only to a specific destination,
Speaker 1: but to know where you are in relation to other
Speaker 1: places as you pass through their signal path. You can
Speaker 1: actually I just these compass and autopilot I think for
Speaker 1: most of it, and then just do corrections off when
Speaker 1: you pass an airport. Maybe, but I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that that would be a thing that they
Speaker 1: would be switching between frequencies during the flight. They could be. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: so the flight crew is using the Maputo v O
Speaker 1: r UM. That's how they're guiding into the airport because
Speaker 1: that's where they're going. I don't know if they actually
Speaker 1: picked it up yet. They they were only half hours, Joe.
Speaker 1: The vrs have a range of up to two miles,
Speaker 1: and they were forty minutes out, which made them about
Speaker 1: sixty miles or so away from the airport, so they
Speaker 1: were definitely in its range and they were definitely going
Speaker 1: to be picking it up there flying that slow. Well,
Speaker 1: they were, they were about to descend. You don't start
Speaker 1: to send two miles out, do you. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The point is they were, they were within it's it's
Speaker 1: It's envelope. They had definitely been picking it up, and
Speaker 1: they were they had tuned into it because that's where
Speaker 1: they were going to head to. They go ahead, and
Speaker 1: like I said, they tell air traffic control that they're
Speaker 1: going to start their descent. Air traffic control says, listen,
Speaker 1: go ahead and tell us when you're at when your
Speaker 1: altitude reaches three thousand feet or if you see our
Speaker 1: runway lights, contact us then and then we'll talk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's really funny. And if we're talking clear night, yes,
Speaker 1: clear knight, not a cloudy night anything like that. The
Speaker 1: mystery really gets going at about nine ten at night
Speaker 1: because that's when the plane, for a reason that nobody knows,
Speaker 1: made a thirty seven degree turn to the right, so
Speaker 1: it banked and turned west because it was headed south
Speaker 1: at that point, So now it's heading not southeast but southwest,
Speaker 1: which nobody knows why that happened. On the cockpit voice recorder,
Speaker 1: you can hear the captain remarking about it, to which
Speaker 1: the navigator says, v O R indicates that way, okay,
Speaker 1: and so that's what he says. So and it's significant,
Speaker 1: right that it's a Soviet crew at this point. Is
Speaker 1: so presumably it's not a crew that's used to making
Speaker 1: this run. This seems like a sort of run that
Speaker 1: that would be incorrect. This crew had been making this run.
Speaker 1: They had been flying in and out of this airport
Speaker 1: quite a few times. It wasn't like it was their
Speaker 1: first time. Okay, that's weird. Yeah, it's it seems like
Speaker 1: he would kind of be used to it. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: granted today we're a little spoiled because everybody uses GPS
Speaker 1: and it's so much more precise. But you know, they
Speaker 1: were like the instrument says go that way, go that way,
Speaker 1: and it's a pretty big bank to make those it's
Speaker 1: a pretty big course correction. Yeah, And essentially they would
Speaker 1: have had to believe they were like, you know, way
Speaker 1: way far off to the east. They would have had
Speaker 1: to be heading out into the ocean by accident. Well,
Speaker 1: and they would have I mean, I'm sure that they
Speaker 1: would have been used to seeing certain landmarks and that
Speaker 1: geographic stuff, right, and so very true. Right, So even
Speaker 1: if the navigator is like, well it says to go
Speaker 1: that way, you would think the pilot would be like,
Speaker 1: but those are the mountains that should be there, like what,
Speaker 1: I don't think it? Right? Yeah, it was dark, so
Speaker 1: that's the thing. As you guys said, there was no
Speaker 1: moon yet, and when they were flying there was navigational aids.
Speaker 1: They weren't seeing things that they were expecting to be seeing,
Speaker 1: like certain lights or certain um radio signals should have
Speaker 1: been coming and they should been picking up certain things,
Speaker 1: and they were and where they were commenting on that
Speaker 1: they were, and they believed that the power was out
Speaker 1: in the city, so they figured that, oh, the electricity
Speaker 1: must be out. I think the captain says something like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's running dark, chaps, or something like that.
Speaker 1: It seems a little I guess it seems a little
Speaker 1: odd to me that they would have made radio contact
Speaker 1: with the tower and not been like, oh, hey, by
Speaker 1: the way, So they do because when they hit the
Speaker 1: three thousand feet mark, they get ahold of the air
Speaker 1: traffic control and they say, we're three thousand feet. And
Speaker 1: by the way, we can't see the runway lights. Can
Speaker 1: you check the runway lights? Yeah, go double check that
Speaker 1: they're on look out the window, buddy. Um. And they
Speaker 1: actually asked that twice. So they asked them to check
Speaker 1: that twice. Um. They're in their descent. They think that they're,
Speaker 1: you know, within a thousand feet of the ground at
Speaker 1: this point, and they're ready to land, so they've dropped
Speaker 1: their landing gear or lower the landing here I should say,
Speaker 1: the thousand feet of the ground at that time. Were
Speaker 1: they well, they thought they were. You know, if I remember,
Speaker 1: I think that the power told them to descend to
Speaker 1: three thousand feet and stayed three thousand, and they had been.
Speaker 1: The problem was they had continued to descend, presuming that
Speaker 1: they were on target and that in another thousand feet
Speaker 1: or so they'd be on the ground. The problem is,
Speaker 1: of course, they didn't stop at three thousand feet, even
Speaker 1: though nobody confirmed that. Yeah, they kept saying, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on here. Um, so they are, they're
Speaker 1: about twenty miles or twelve miles out or twenty kilometers
Speaker 1: out at this point, and then the ground proximity warnings
Speaker 1: start going off, which is the warning that says, hey,
Speaker 1: the ground is right under you, pull up, but how
Speaker 1: how far right under you? Okay, so right right under
Speaker 1: you because I think the ground warning that you're going
Speaker 1: to hit that house. Yeah, they went off, and they
Speaker 1: actually descended another two hundred feet I think it was.
Speaker 1: They kept going down. And that's another thing that nobody
Speaker 1: can really panis to why they did that. They kept
Speaker 1: going down even though the alarms going off. I mean,
Speaker 1: the crew is swearing they can't figure out what's going on.
Speaker 1: They're not happy. I believe that. I believe they thought
Speaker 1: the ground proximity alarm was just defective and they decided
Speaker 1: that apparently, and they kept talking to the air traffic
Speaker 1: control for another twenty two seconds. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you know, if if your ground proximity thing is
Speaker 1: going off, right, you would assume that either you're seeing
Speaker 1: lights from the ground because you're pretty dang close to
Speaker 1: the ground, or your sensor is faulty and you're where
Speaker 1: you think you are and you believe that you're in
Speaker 1: the spot that you have been in a hundred times
Speaker 1: so far. So this part is bad. Yeah. The problem
Speaker 1: was is that it turned out the ground proximity warning
Speaker 1: was right, It was not wrong. As I said, they
Speaker 1: had the wheels down. The plane continued to descend, so
Speaker 1: you know, the goes off. Twenty two seconds later, the
Speaker 1: plane crashes into a hillside. So, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: what happened is the wheels and the belly of the
Speaker 1: craft hit the top of one of the hills in
Speaker 1: the area that it was in. It bounced off of
Speaker 1: that hill into the next hill, didn't go nose first in,
Speaker 1: but you know, went into it, at which point one
Speaker 1: of the wings hit a tree and it starts tumbling.
Speaker 1: There was a total of forty four people on this plane.
Speaker 1: Nine of them survived, so thirty four of them there
Speaker 1: thirty four including samhere Michelle, it was thirty four deaths
Speaker 1: lone of there were forty four people and nine survived.
Speaker 1: Oh no, okay, so here's the here's the weird thing
Speaker 1: about the numbers. Thank you for pointing that out, because
Speaker 1: I remember reading this and then it caught me. Math
Speaker 1: isn't my thing. But one of the people that survived
Speaker 1: the crash initially died from the injuries two months later,
Speaker 1: so that's why it's okay, that's what screw me. Up.
Speaker 1: So there's where I did my math. Nine people survived initially,
Speaker 1: but then one of them died two months later after that,
Speaker 1: so technically eight survivors to st Yeah yeah, no, not
Speaker 1: not awesome. Um, but one of the one of the
Speaker 1: people that was on there that we talked about was
Speaker 1: Samara Michelle's wife, Grasha Michelle, and you might recognize her
Speaker 1: name because she would later go on many years later,
Speaker 1: about a decade or more later, she married Nelson Mandela,
Speaker 1: so she was his wife. It puts her in one
Speaker 1: of those really unique categories as being the first first
Speaker 1: lady of two different nations, which is something that you know. Obviously,
Speaker 1: she's the first that's never really happened before she and
Speaker 1: she was she was Nelson Mandela's second wife. Correct, it
Speaker 1: was her second marriage and his second, which is fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the
Speaker 1: plane was not in fact over Maputo Airport, Puto maybe
Speaker 1: was not suffering some kind of weird power loss, and
Speaker 1: actually they had banked into the forest. Well what had
Speaker 1: happened is because of that thirty seven degree turn, they
Speaker 1: ended up in the La Bombo Mountains, which is on
Speaker 1: the border of Mozambeque, Swaziland and South Africa corners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a weird little Noman's land. It's about thirty five
Speaker 1: miles away from Maputo, which I guess would be fifty kilometers. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's yeah, it's a it's a weird hilly area
Speaker 1: and the elevation is somewhere around feet. But it is
Speaker 1: where they would expect had they been on the correct
Speaker 1: course and then banked the way they did, That's where
Speaker 1: they would expect them to have been, right. Okay, I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure based on the time and
Speaker 1: the speed and they're travel that is correct. I just
Speaker 1: want to make sure that we're saying that like that
Speaker 1: made sense. The turn didn't make sense. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: term is one of the big mysteries along with why
Speaker 1: they why they didn't didn't seems like with planes, um,
Speaker 1: the turn is often turn can spell disaster. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it's also going to be pretty obvious here
Speaker 1: that you know, because they've been communicating with air traffic
Speaker 1: control when they suddenly stopped communicating and then didn't say
Speaker 1: anything again to Maputo, that they launched a huge search
Speaker 1: and rescue operating because they knew their president was on
Speaker 1: that plane. Absolutely correct. The plane went down just after
Speaker 1: nine o'clock at night. But because of where it crashed
Speaker 1: in that weird little Noman's land, that little tri corner
Speaker 1: as you called it, Um, it wasn't until about midnight
Speaker 1: that the first South African police officers arrived at the
Speaker 1: crash scene. So you keep saying just after nine pm,
Speaker 1: I think it was like, yeah, I just want to
Speaker 1: be actually, no, wait a second, if they made the
Speaker 1: turn at yeah, I guess it would be around when
Speaker 1: the when their last communications were. I just yeah, because
Speaker 1: for me, you know, a little after nine is not
Speaker 1: and I will accept that. Um. So the plane goes down,
Speaker 1: it's not till after midnight that the first South African
Speaker 1: police officers get there. Yeah, several hours. And that's because
Speaker 1: you know, obviously it's not a highly populated area. It's
Speaker 1: not as if cell phones are ubiquitous. It's you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta do things by driving to places to get phone,
Speaker 1: you know, find people. Yeah, well there's not like that.
Speaker 1: There was a village right nearby, right, but the village
Speaker 1: had to then contact and then somebody had to come
Speaker 1: out and they had to be like, wow, there was
Speaker 1: a big explosion there and then somebody had to take
Speaker 1: them seriously, and so they get there about midnight. About
Speaker 1: an hour later, the first medics arrive and it's not
Speaker 1: until quarter to four a m. That a medical chopper
Speaker 1: actually arrives to transport the survivors to the hospital. So
Speaker 1: these poor people have been on the ground literally for
Speaker 1: about six hours. So that didn't help the mortality rate
Speaker 1: among the crash victims. Now you're probably asking yourself, well,
Speaker 1: during that time, what were the South Africans doing the
Speaker 1: police what were they doing? And the answer would be
Speaker 1: they were collecting paperwork. Were they not also administering first Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm not being fair. I'm not being fair. We're doing
Speaker 1: what they could pulling people out of the wrecords. But
Speaker 1: at the same time they were running around picking up
Speaker 1: every single piece of paper that was floating around. They
Speaker 1: were opening luggage to find any and everything of import
Speaker 1: that they then were carting away to copy because this
Speaker 1: is an an intelligence bonanza at this point. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the things that they find and they sees is
Speaker 1: the cockpit voice recorder. They sees it under the auspice
Speaker 1: of fear that it can be tampered with, which is
Speaker 1: the weirdest reasoning I've ever heard of. I mean, it
Speaker 1: technically is their jurisdiction, but they, the South Africans did
Speaker 1: a lot of weird stuff during this. But I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that, like I weird or not, we can say
Speaker 1: it's like super nefaragous that they see this thing, but
Speaker 1: it's their jurisdiction. Of course they're going to take it.
Speaker 1: You're right, Well, it's also besides, I mean, did they
Speaker 1: see did they just did they just secure it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they took it. Well I know they took it, but
Speaker 1: I mean it seems like you should take it and
Speaker 1: put it somewhere, and you took it, wouldn't get it,
Speaker 1: didn't take a while to get it back to he
Speaker 1: had to do it under threat of legal action. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's really hokey what happened here. But um, if
Speaker 1: we move forward in time, I think it's around six am,
Speaker 1: but maybe a little before that, the South African Minister
Speaker 1: of Ford Affairs Pick both arrives and they also by
Speaker 1: the way about this time or shortly thereafter, let a
Speaker 1: South African news crew on the site and pick both
Speaker 1: of begins to talk to the camera crew and he
Speaker 1: starts making really strange statements, which in retrospect everybody said,
Speaker 1: we're diversionary tactics, but they were still really weird because
Speaker 1: he starts saying things like, well, obviously the flight crew
Speaker 1: was drunk on vodka because they were Russian, or obviously
Speaker 1: the plane was old and poorly kept, which didn't actually
Speaker 1: turn out to be true. I'm gonna say something here,
Speaker 1: are you sure he wasn't just racist? I'm not going
Speaker 1: to respond to that because I can't. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because this, like this sounds like somebody being like, well,
Speaker 1: oh they were Russians. Oh well they were drunk on
Speaker 1: vodka and like doing Mother Russia the favor like that,
Speaker 1: like you know exactly where you're going. It had the
Speaker 1: same thought myself. It could not necessary because the rescues
Speaker 1: are white. It's racism. Okay, we're just gonna leave that alone.
Speaker 1: He also continued to make other weird state ments. Uh.
Speaker 1: He said that obviously the meeting that Samora Michelle had
Speaker 1: been at wash was meant to set up a plot
Speaker 1: overthrow the government of Malawi. Uh. And then he also
Speaker 1: made statements about how Samora Michelle were both his and
Speaker 1: President Botha's dear friends. By the way, there might be
Speaker 1: a bit of confusion there. Pick was the foreign uh
Speaker 1: foreign affairs minister. There was also the president at the time,
Speaker 1: who was of no relation of South Africa, also had
Speaker 1: the last name of sort of. It was just a
Speaker 1: weird little thing there, But like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: none of his claims were true and nobody could ever
Speaker 1: ever pin down why he was doing it because he
Speaker 1: did it for like a year. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the bodies of everybody who died in the crash, they're
Speaker 1: collected and autopsies would eventually be done on four members.
Speaker 1: Are actually a total of seven people, four of whom
Speaker 1: were members of the flight crew, and then three others
Speaker 1: who were passengers on the plane. But there's for and
Speaker 1: so there's that seven, and then there's also another group
Speaker 1: of six bodies that were not autopsy that when they
Speaker 1: were returned to the Mozambican government, had these weird seven
Speaker 1: m seven millimeter long cuts on their necks that were
Speaker 1: stitched closed and they were done postmortem, and it's believed
Speaker 1: that that was done to collect blood samples. But it's
Speaker 1: the weirdest way to collect blood samples. Since I don't
Speaker 1: know needles or a thing. But maybe this is a
Speaker 1: field method to do it. I don't know. The Karatid
Speaker 1: agree where that set. I believe so. Yes, and they
Speaker 1: were postmored postmortem. They were also proven according to the
Speaker 1: Mozambique Medical Commission, they weren't the cause of death for
Speaker 1: these people. So it's not as if somebody cut their
Speaker 1: throws open and stitched them closed to keep it quiet.
Speaker 1: I guess for me, the like the weird part is
Speaker 1: stitching them back closed. His horror. Yeah, like why you know,
Speaker 1: like if they their dead bodies and you're not trying
Speaker 1: to hide respect. I mean, that's the only thing I
Speaker 1: can come up with is maybe it's out of respect
Speaker 1: to the dead. I mean, you're already like keeping from
Speaker 1: leaking everywhere. I don't know, super glue man, you're laughing,
Speaker 1: but I mean, like that's like, I know, that's why
Speaker 1: I was invetted. I don't I know. Um, Okay, So
Speaker 1: we had already talked about here a little bit, the
Speaker 1: fact that there was a town nearby that was the
Speaker 1: town of Bezzini. And yeah, yeah, okay, this is not
Speaker 1: my language, so I'm going to run with that is Bazzini. Um,
Speaker 1: and those people did the people of that village did
Speaker 1: go to the site, but they also make claims about
Speaker 1: how when the soldiers arrived they chase them away, which
Speaker 1: I don't. You got to secure the scene, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly my point. I don't. I don't find that
Speaker 1: bit weird suspicious. Okay, So by the way, um, we
Speaker 1: should probably go back to Mozambique for a second, because
Speaker 1: they're still looking for their president and it's not till
Speaker 1: ten to seven in the morning that the South African
Speaker 1: government lets them know that they found the plane and
Speaker 1: then they told him it was in a different spot,
Speaker 1: did kilometers away the different spot? Things suspicious? The you know,
Speaker 1: waiting realistically a couple hours. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: how fast ward travels that, oh, especially right we're talking
Speaker 1: like analog days. The phone still is a thing. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. But I'm saying that, like, Okay, so
Speaker 1: plane goes missing, right, so your air controller is going
Speaker 1: to call your government and you're going to mobilize your military.
Speaker 1: You're not going to call every single branch of the
Speaker 1: police in all of the country surroundings. So I will
Speaker 1: rebut that a little bit, which is that there foreign
Speaker 1: ministers had gotten ahold of the South Africans to let
Speaker 1: them know. So the South African government knows this but
Speaker 1: gets a call ethics four or five in the morning saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we found this plane and a crash and we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure the president of Mozambeeque is on it. But we're
Speaker 1: assuming that. Um, the people who were contacted in the
Speaker 1: South African government were also likes well that they were
Speaker 1: letting right. So at that point they could have turned
Speaker 1: around and said, we think we found your plane, but
Speaker 1: we're I'm just saying that, like you're you're attributing. I
Speaker 1: just think it could be bad communication. It could be
Speaker 1: also that they just wanted to give like wait until
Speaker 1: people were up, because at this point, planes down, people
Speaker 1: are dead. Just let him sleep in for a few
Speaker 1: more hours. Maybe they were just being considerate college dorm rules. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that is less likely than like bad communication,
Speaker 1: because like if they're I mean, they're if if they've
Speaker 1: been communicating, hey we lost our president, they're already awake.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows they're awake. But yeah, okay, well, let's just
Speaker 1: assuming that they wanted a few extra hours just to
Speaker 1: you know, gather up more intail. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what I think. That's what it is. They were busy
Speaker 1: photo copying and photographing everything they could get their hands
Speaker 1: and making weird cuts and bodies right. Well, that didn't
Speaker 1: happen till later the an investigation is launched into this crash.
Speaker 1: This is based on the Chicago Convention, which was agreed
Speaker 1: to by the countries in that area of several years prior.
Speaker 1: The crash was investigated jointly by the countries of South
Speaker 1: Africa because that's where the plane had crashed, by the
Speaker 1: country of Mozambique because it was their plane, and by
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union because they were the manufacturer of the plane.
Speaker 1: So we've got three organizations involved in this joint investigation.
Speaker 1: But it didn't last very long because both the Mozambecon
Speaker 1: and the Soviet delegations pulled out because they felt like
Speaker 1: the South Africans just weren't involving them. They were they
Speaker 1: were cutting them short on things, they weren't giving them
Speaker 1: all the information. So in the end it ended up
Speaker 1: being a South African investigation. It was headed up by
Speaker 1: Judge Cecil margot Uh and it's commonly referred to as
Speaker 1: the Margot Commission, and that name might sound a little
Speaker 1: familiar to anybody who's listening to this podcast, because if
Speaker 1: you remember the seven crash of South African Airlines flight,
Speaker 1: we covered that while back. The Margot Commission also investigated
Speaker 1: that crash. So there's a weird another weird connection. And
Speaker 1: the longer we do this, the more connections between every story.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're all connected. I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: it's the Octavius. Oh man, I'm not as young and
Speaker 1: quick as you once were. Whipper snapper already, um so
Speaker 1: moving it was swamp gas, right? They did not because
Speaker 1: there was a swamp nearby. No, um no. The Margot
Speaker 1: Commission actually concluded that the whole thing was caused by
Speaker 1: crew error. Uh they were. They said that the crew
Speaker 1: was negligent in their duties, which is why they made
Speaker 1: both the turn and why they didn't follow the procedure
Speaker 1: when the ground proximity warnings went off. Basically, they're saying
Speaker 1: there was no reason for them to turn. That was
Speaker 1: a bad move and they should have stopped descending or
Speaker 1: pulled up when the warnings went off. Well I would too.
Speaker 1: This might be where Russian technology quality comes, quality control
Speaker 1: comes into because it comes into play because they might
Speaker 1: have thought it's just it's just not working right, you know,
Speaker 1: because the crew itself, the ground proximity along the crew
Speaker 1: themselves thinking that about the because I think in the
Speaker 1: faulty part, yeah, I mean, if that thing is going off,
Speaker 1: the only reason you're not going to pull up unless
Speaker 1: you're drunk on vodka. Course, And the only reason you're
Speaker 1: not going to pull up is if you think it's
Speaker 1: just yeah, I guess, uh, well, I'll wait intil theory,
Speaker 1: because you know, what the thing is that it's funny
Speaker 1: you say that because there is some stuff in the commission.
Speaker 1: But the Soviets themselves, they were not happy with the
Speaker 1: results of the Margo Commission, and they submitted a minority
Speaker 1: report of their own, and that is where they they
Speaker 1: put out or put forward the idea that the plane
Speaker 1: was actually led off course intentionally by a decoy v
Speaker 1: O R. So that that signal we talked about before
Speaker 1: somebody spoofed it and led them astray. That really didn't
Speaker 1: get a lot of traction at that time, But fifteen
Speaker 1: years later the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't so the TRC was set up after
Speaker 1: the apartheid government fell apart, and from the way I
Speaker 1: understand it, what it did is it looked into situations
Speaker 1: where humans right violations were made with no care by
Speaker 1: the South African government, and they were they would help
Speaker 1: do what they could, either documented or possibly fixed, do
Speaker 1: what they could. Now, I don't know why they got
Speaker 1: involved in this case short of the fact that they
Speaker 1: that Mandela's now wife was involved with it, or the
Speaker 1: fact that people have been saying for years that the
Speaker 1: South African government was responsible for the doubting of this plane.
Speaker 1: You know, they they actually gave a little bit of
Speaker 1: credence to the idea that there was a decoy v
Speaker 1: O R, whereas the Margot Commission completely poo pooed that.
Speaker 1: Um so, I mean, I don't know that. The other
Speaker 1: thing that they did do is they couldn't confirm that
Speaker 1: there was a decoy. But the other thing that they
Speaker 1: did do is they really throw dirt at the South
Speaker 1: African government and kind of said maybe they knew something
Speaker 1: more than they had led on. By the fact that
Speaker 1: it had been confirmed that the South African government had
Speaker 1: been tracking Michelle's plane prior to the turn, so they
Speaker 1: had known where it was for quite a while, and
Speaker 1: they didn't. They didn't. They never contacted him to say, hey,
Speaker 1: hey guys, you know your way off course, or be
Speaker 1: hey guys, you're in South African airspace, or see, hey guys,
Speaker 1: you should stop going down there's a mountain there. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, they didn't know what the flight was,
Speaker 1: the flight subjective was then, and and it's not their job,
Speaker 1: and the crash just they didn't. They didn't spend any
Speaker 1: time in South African airspace to speak of. I'm in
Speaker 1: total agreement with that. The they should have called as
Speaker 1: soon as they hit South African airspace is just bad
Speaker 1: to me because it doesn't make any sense. They were
Speaker 1: literally in South African air sprace for I believe about
Speaker 1: thirty seconds at the speed they were trapped. So there's
Speaker 1: not a there's not a whole lot to that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now let's get into theories. And I've got our
Speaker 1: theories broken up into two sections, very simple, real or
Speaker 1: not real. No, and don't say suicide because that's not
Speaker 1: a theory either. Know that the sections are who done
Speaker 1: it and how? And the who done its section is
Speaker 1: actually really really easy because there are so many players
Speaker 1: involved in the area at the time that anybody could
Speaker 1: have benefited from taken Michelle out. He had already survived
Speaker 1: several assassiny allegedly, I actually should say that allegedly had
Speaker 1: survived several assassination tempts in in the recent past. The
Speaker 1: South Africa government didn't like him because a he was
Speaker 1: he was a socialist. Uh. There was also the racial
Speaker 1: aspect of the apart Aid government versus Michelle. There's also Rhinomo.
Speaker 1: They would have had the group that was opposed to
Speaker 1: the government since seventy six. They had a stake in
Speaker 1: the game because if if they took out the president,
Speaker 1: maybe they can take out the socialist government or you know,
Speaker 1: move themselves into positions of power. Um. There's the president
Speaker 1: of Malawi who didn't like Michelle because Michelle had the
Speaker 1: president of Malawe. What this guy had been doing is
Speaker 1: he's been doing with a lot of people. Had he
Speaker 1: been sheltering NAMO soldiers. And as retaliation, Michelle had said,
Speaker 1: if you keep doing that, I Am going to put
Speaker 1: missiles all along the border of my country and any
Speaker 1: of your planes that come into our airspace will be
Speaker 1: shot down, which effectively would shut down a lot of
Speaker 1: trade for them because things were flying in and out
Speaker 1: of the country. So that guy didn't like him. There's
Speaker 1: also he had so one of the things that you
Speaker 1: will here said is that he was going home that
Speaker 1: day so that the next meeting he the next day
Speaker 1: he could have a meeting to restructure both the government
Speaker 1: and the military. Because it turns out socialist systems are
Speaker 1: notorious for corruption what and he was one of those
Speaker 1: few guys that in that kind of regime didn't stand
Speaker 1: for that. He had had evidently gone after people before
Speaker 1: who were accused of being corrupt, got rid of competitors
Speaker 1: by accusing the corruption there. That is a very good point,
Speaker 1: But I'm going to make him sound much more noble
Speaker 1: than that and continue to say that he fought corruption
Speaker 1: in his government. But the point is those people may
Speaker 1: have said, uh no, he is not taking me out
Speaker 1: of this cush push chair that I'm in. I'm taking
Speaker 1: that plane. Yeah. The thing about it is when your
Speaker 1: president for life, you know that sooner or later people
Speaker 1: we're just gonna keep piling up enemies for life. That's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing. But he might as well have been
Speaker 1: effectively he was he was. He was. He was in
Speaker 1: office for what eleven years it was it was socialists,
Speaker 1: So there were party elections. But yeah, I mean those
Speaker 1: those are easy to rig I'm not I'm not foolish
Speaker 1: enough to think that they were. They were free elections.
Speaker 1: But I get what you're and the problem with who
Speaker 1: done it? Could have been anybody. I mean it literally
Speaker 1: could have been anybody, because there was things to be
Speaker 1: benefited but for or gained by a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I'm doubting them the least. Oh yeah, no, I really
Speaker 1: think the Soviets, based on what they did, I would
Speaker 1: say they probably didn't do it. I would say that
Speaker 1: they did interfere at a certain by putting out the
Speaker 1: accusations at the South Africans, and we'll be talking about this,
Speaker 1: you know that they duped them into crashing. They were
Speaker 1: definitely stirring the pot. And then there was a lot
Speaker 1: of stirring the pot. Yeah, yeah, I was delivered on
Speaker 1: your part. I doubt they even believed it. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's go ahead and talk about the first
Speaker 1: theory of how so this is actually along the lines
Speaker 1: of what Joe was talking about, which is that the
Speaker 1: theory is is that indeed this was crew error and
Speaker 1: it oh, actually this, since this is a different one,
Speaker 1: I apologize from what Joe was saying. This is that
Speaker 1: it was Crewe error and that they did in fact
Speaker 1: make a mistake with the v o R because they
Speaker 1: was just drunk on vodka. No, no, no, all of
Speaker 1: that was proven wrong. No, you know that's wrong. That's
Speaker 1: what we were at. I'm positive I learn that there
Speaker 1: are autopsies turned up a fair amount of alcohol in
Speaker 1: their systems, but of course, on your body decomposes, it
Speaker 1: was nothing outside of the range of what you would
Speaker 1: find in a normal decomposing body. It's absolutely correct. So
Speaker 1: the the official line or belief of the Margot Commission
Speaker 1: is that the crew had made the error of setting
Speaker 1: one of their two v o R receivers to the
Speaker 1: wrong frequency. Maputo uses hundred and twelve point seven Mega hurts.
Speaker 1: Matsafa Airport, which is a hundred and twenty miles away
Speaker 1: in Swaziland, uses a hundred and twelve point three Mega hurts.
Speaker 1: The two airports that are kind of close together, I
Speaker 1: would think that would space them further apart. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I really I looked at that. Mc guys, really come on.
Speaker 1: But the Margot Commission blamed the mistake on the design
Speaker 1: of the receiver in the airplane, saying that the numbers
Speaker 1: three and seven the way they were displayed, looked similar.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, I've never seen an image of
Speaker 1: their v O R receiver, um, so I can't I
Speaker 1: can't support that or deny it at all. But I
Speaker 1: also kind of think that that's maybe the commission having
Speaker 1: a bit of bias against the way the Russian plane
Speaker 1: was designed and the Russians themselves, the Soviets. Maybe I
Speaker 1: certainly they were aheaded in the right direction, but they
Speaker 1: were looking at that v O R A that a now, well,
Speaker 1: well what they're saying though, what the what the Margot
Speaker 1: Commission is saying is that they were on the wrong frequency.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the map and the trajectory
Speaker 1: that they were on, they were actually heading in a
Speaker 1: pretty a pretty straight course to Matsafa. So it's it's
Speaker 1: understandable why they came to that conclusion. But if you
Speaker 1: were listening, you may have noticed that I said that
Speaker 1: one of their two receivers, this plane had two v
Speaker 1: O R receivers, and when the investigators looked at the
Speaker 1: second one, they found that it was set to the
Speaker 1: correct channel, which was Matt Puto's signal, but they wasn't
Speaker 1: one of them, the backup. Yeah, they didn't use them
Speaker 1: both all the time. And so it seems that what
Speaker 1: they had done is they had set the they picked
Speaker 1: up their their trajectory based off the v O R
Speaker 1: or their their course, they adjust did and from there
Speaker 1: they turned on probably the autopilot, which just had a
Speaker 1: course heading, you know, and the autopilot took care of
Speaker 1: the next however long it was, which would have meant that,
Speaker 1: you know, when they made that turn that put them
Speaker 1: on a heading of two degrees, if anybody had happened
Speaker 1: to look at the backup, they might have realized that
Speaker 1: they were completely off course. And so that's where the
Speaker 1: Margot commission is saying, is that they failed their duties
Speaker 1: because they picked up the wrong signal and didn't look
Speaker 1: at the other one or check it again later on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they they've got the autopilot going for a long
Speaker 1: time and then when they come off that bearing and
Speaker 1: turn onto the v O R and they realized, oh,
Speaker 1: we must have been blown off by a cross and
Speaker 1: blown way off course. And so understandably they made that
Speaker 1: course of joke and then they turned the autopilot back
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, so it's I don't know, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess for me, I mean the fact that they reached
Speaker 1: out a pup of times to say like, hey, are
Speaker 1: your lights on? Though, like they had questions, right they
Speaker 1: there was something in them, Yeah, there was something that
Speaker 1: was in the in them that was saying like, okay,
Speaker 1: but we should be seeing lights, like these are the
Speaker 1: things we should be seeing. Why are we not seeing
Speaker 1: those things? And to you know, as I understand it,
Speaker 1: they were getting feedback from the tower that was like
Speaker 1: all the lights are one they were. They were radio
Speaker 1: communication like what what do you mean you don't see
Speaker 1: the lights? Like, if you're where you're supposed to be,
Speaker 1: you should be seeing the lights. I think the tower
Speaker 1: responded to the light question after the second request. They
Speaker 1: didn't do it right away, right, But I mean they're
Speaker 1: managing a ton of air traffic, right, you don't expect
Speaker 1: But I think, you know, for me, that's that's where
Speaker 1: the problem comes in. Is if they were being totally negligent,
Speaker 1: maybe they're being a little lazy. You're like, whatever, this
Speaker 1: is the right thing. But if you've made the run
Speaker 1: a hundred times, you know what to look for. And
Speaker 1: if you're not seeing those things, and you're even like
Speaker 1: mentioning that you're not of alarm bells and you should
Speaker 1: be doing something. And then when alarm bells that hey
Speaker 1: you're at a weird altitude go off, maybe you should
Speaker 1: be listening to those things. And so, by the way,
Speaker 1: they didn't. They don't have Did they have air traffic
Speaker 1: control in Mozambique or did they have it in those days?
Speaker 1: Were their radars operating? Oh? Did were they? Is anybody
Speaker 1: tracking their plan just as the South Africans, I don't know,
Speaker 1: To be honest, I've never that's a great question, and
Speaker 1: I've never actually seen anything that said anything about that.
Speaker 1: I will mention that there's a lot of controversy over
Speaker 1: the records of the Maputo air Traffic Control because things
Speaker 1: like their tapes of the conversation are gone. They were
Speaker 1: quote unquote lost or disappeared, were just recorded over we used. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't I don't know if they
Speaker 1: were actually saving anything. I doubt that they had the
Speaker 1: capability at the time to digitally save anything. So it's
Speaker 1: not as if you know, today you all we see
Speaker 1: this thing where you can play back the radar to
Speaker 1: see what the heck was popping up. I don't think
Speaker 1: they they had I don't know that technology was available,
Speaker 1: but a sorry as audio tapes, so you know you
Speaker 1: definitely save those. Well they tried, so they just appeared
Speaker 1: they went the way of the Dodo. Okay. So I
Speaker 1: don't know about this one. I'm I have mixed feelings
Speaker 1: on the crew error especially Yeah, I mean, it sounds
Speaker 1: like they realized that something was wrong. They may not
Speaker 1: have reacted in time. But yeah, yeah, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I think that no matter how you cut it, even
Speaker 1: if even if there was some skullduggery on a part
Speaker 1: of certain parties, the crew is still screwed up. They
Speaker 1: may yeah, they may have been a little uh lax
Speaker 1: in their reactions. If that if what you're going out
Speaker 1: is there. Yeah, so let's talk about skull duggery. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the false decoy or a false v o
Speaker 1: R decoy v o R because, like I said, the
Speaker 1: Soviets and their minority report, they said that they had
Speaker 1: to have been led astray and led into South Africa,
Speaker 1: and in their in the minority report, they get weirdly
Speaker 1: specific and say that obviously, and I'm using quotes here,
Speaker 1: obviously it was built using technology that was provided by
Speaker 1: the Israeli Intelligent Agents, which intelligence agency. Which that's just
Speaker 1: that's an odd massade. Yeah, it's something about the massade.
Speaker 1: It's it's a weird thing to to slide in there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, well yeah, I mean that this at
Speaker 1: this time, you know that the Soviets were still they
Speaker 1: were trying to stir the pot everywhere, included in in
Speaker 1: the Israelis at that time were allies of the South
Speaker 1: Africans and so they were they were always trying to
Speaker 1: stir up trouble in the Arab world too, so work
Speaker 1: in Israel, and I can see why they would do that.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. So
Speaker 1: from from that point on though, the claims of a
Speaker 1: decoy or mobile vel v o R began to come
Speaker 1: up and surface, and I did some digging into this
Speaker 1: with some online sources and then also by reaching out
Speaker 1: to some of our experts who I mentioned a little
Speaker 1: bit before. So I do want to reach it. I
Speaker 1: do want to say thank you to one Zach Kim
Speaker 1: and Ronnie all of those experts. You guys saw the
Speaker 1: emails back and forth, and yeah, yeah, there was there
Speaker 1: was some high math in there that I had to
Speaker 1: work on for a few days, but it made sense
Speaker 1: and I couldn't have done it without these folks. Thank you.
Speaker 1: This is why we have experts. That's the thing that
Speaker 1: I've been noticing a little bit about our experts though,
Speaker 1: as they assume we know too much. Like sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: respond with like a really interesting answer, but you're like,
Speaker 1: but I need to google like five of these, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what any of that means. Thank you,
Speaker 1: I think, but thank you to everybody because what that
Speaker 1: did is that help me understand better how a v
Speaker 1: o R worked, and even more so, how you could
Speaker 1: spoof one. So that was really important that you don't
Speaker 1: find it a lot of the online stuff. Now. In
Speaker 1: two thousand three, there was a South African man named
Speaker 1: Hanslow who came forward. He was near the end of
Speaker 1: his jail sentence and he was in jail for crimes
Speaker 1: committed outside of the regime's instructions, which I have to
Speaker 1: take means he went a little trigger happy, probably, but
Speaker 1: he said that he was part of a South African
Speaker 1: team of special forces that were at the crash site.
Speaker 1: The night of the crash, he was on a backup team.
Speaker 1: The primary team was running the decoy v O R.
Speaker 1: He was in a backup team that was there with
Speaker 1: RPGs with the express intent of if the plane doesn't
Speaker 1: crash on its own, it doesn't take the bait, shoot
Speaker 1: it down. I don't think an RPG is going to
Speaker 1: be really any good for taking a plane down. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe, like, yeah, listen, I played too many video
Speaker 1: games and they all go boom everything. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: in a video game, I can take an airplane down
Speaker 1: with a ten millimeter It's actually we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the little things that you can bring a plane
Speaker 1: down with because it's actually kind of scary how easy
Speaker 1: it is. But no, you're a surface air missile. So
Speaker 1: they are there with armaments that would take it down
Speaker 1: if if it didn't fall for the trick. I guess, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't believe this guy's story, and I
Speaker 1: don't think I have to do too much to really
Speaker 1: trough that out because there's a lot of hearsay about
Speaker 1: what he has to say. And there are one or
Speaker 1: two people who came out and said, oh, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: we we know the guy who made it. He's telling
Speaker 1: the truth. But you know, Hanslow also said that he
Speaker 1: was involved in another operation using the same type of
Speaker 1: device that brought down another plane. And oh he was
Speaker 1: also involved in that was other plane. He was also
Speaker 1: involved in the monitoring of Namibian activists by the name
Speaker 1: of Anton Lubowski, who was later murdered and they don't
Speaker 1: know who killed him. I do have to point out
Speaker 1: those that, you know, the locals, the ones who said, well,
Speaker 1: they got chased away from the site. They also said,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a lot of military activity in
Speaker 1: this area the days before, but like it's a remote
Speaker 1: area of South Africa. South Africa was pretty militized nation
Speaker 1: at that They also had a supposedly they had a
Speaker 1: base that was there for a couple of years, so
Speaker 1: they could have been on exercises or they could have
Speaker 1: been like trying to reinforce their border. Very possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's be honest. Michelle had just said I'm going to
Speaker 1: put missiles all along my border, and so they were
Speaker 1: probably like, oh, let's go check that out. And then
Speaker 1: there was suspicious activity in terms of there was a
Speaker 1: really big tent erected on that site. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like how the locals say, how big of a tent,
Speaker 1: like really really big, like as big as an airplane,
Speaker 1: as big as a bread box. Now just big, bigger
Speaker 1: than your average you know, troop tent, you know, a
Speaker 1: big tent, but we don't know what it is from
Speaker 1: that was it was it hiding like Thor's hammer or
Speaker 1: so We're going to move on while you try to
Speaker 1: find wall. Though, Let's let's circle back a little bit
Speaker 1: to the v o R and talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that, like how it could have been spoof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this is where this is heading, because that for
Speaker 1: me is like way less complicated or out of unbelievable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to go there. So the thing do you
Speaker 1: need to know about the v o R is they
Speaker 1: tend to be really big. They're big things. Like one
Speaker 1: of our experts was saying that to make one mobile
Speaker 1: or it was an expert I read somewhere, they said
Speaker 1: that it would have had to have been on the
Speaker 1: back of a three on truck, which is basically a
Speaker 1: semi and that's from its correct because they are also
Speaker 1: superpower hungry, so you got to bring a lit another
Speaker 1: truck or two with with the generator on it right,
Speaker 1: and if the farther you want to throw its signal,
Speaker 1: the higher up in the air, you need to run
Speaker 1: the antenna. So you could you could conceivably need an
Speaker 1: antenna that's fifty hundred hundred and thirty feet tall. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a big antenna. These things though, they're
Speaker 1: big and bulky, so it's a little weird to think
Speaker 1: about that, you know, the way that somebody could carry
Speaker 1: one of those around. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: are the expert Zach pointed out for me is that
Speaker 1: when you have two v rs broadcasting on the same frequency,
Speaker 1: unless one is massively stronger than the other, they might
Speaker 1: actually cancel each other out, which then defeats the purpose.
Speaker 1: It's also gonna like, you know, they're on the same frequency,
Speaker 1: you would think that they'd be going like, well, VR
Speaker 1: points this way and this way and yeah, or it
Speaker 1: comes up and down back and forth. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: they put it a call to the airport to say
Speaker 1: what's going on with this exactly. But the workaround for that,
Speaker 1: rather than having this competing signal issue would simply be
Speaker 1: to have an inside man at the Mputu Airport. Who
Speaker 1: could during the time that you want, you knew that
Speaker 1: the President's plane was going to be coming by a
Speaker 1: certain area, flipped off the switch. So now you you
Speaker 1: turn on the decoy. The decoy runs for a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time until you can confirm that the plane
Speaker 1: is turned and then you flip on the real one
Speaker 1: again and you turn off the decoy. That also would
Speaker 1: solve the problem that I had with the decoy, which
Speaker 1: is if the decoy was running, it should have caught
Speaker 1: more planes. It should have drawn more planes than just
Speaker 1: this one planes. The other thing about it is is, uh,
Speaker 1: this a little conspiracy requires an amazing amount of coordination.
Speaker 1: Uh somebody was where did they leave from? It was yeah,
Speaker 1: so somebody. So they had to have somebody at Embald
Speaker 1: Airport to let them know when the plane took off
Speaker 1: and headed south. They would have known, They would have
Speaker 1: had a fair approximate idea what the airsped air speed
Speaker 1: of it would be no when it was approaching. It's
Speaker 1: objective complex, but they had to have They had to
Speaker 1: have a guy at that airport to provide them with
Speaker 1: that information. They had to have a guy at the
Speaker 1: at Maputa Airport to flip off the switch, and then
Speaker 1: they had to have these guys running. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is this, this is a well greased operation. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Kind of actually, Joe, can I can I kind of
Speaker 1: cut off part of that plan for you. They made
Speaker 1: contact with air traffic control and then they made their
Speaker 1: turn so that it could be as simple as they
Speaker 1: made They initiated the handshake of high we're here, and
Speaker 1: somebody says turn it on, turn it off, and they
Speaker 1: flipped the switches right then plane turns. They know the
Speaker 1: crew is probably not going to continue to monitor the
Speaker 1: v o R, and they turn it back off once
Speaker 1: they've confirmed that they've made their turn, and that simplifies
Speaker 1: the number of people involved to start the beginning, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But and then I guess they could turn it off
Speaker 1: and then they could like to start their truck up
Speaker 1: and get the hell out of there, because you've got
Speaker 1: a plan heading right for you. Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: You know what. The other way that this could very
Speaker 1: well have gone, though, again, this is a little more
Speaker 1: difficult when it comes to the decoy or the false
Speaker 1: v o R readings is if you remember I talked
Speaker 1: about that the signals. When they're pointing due north, they're
Speaker 1: both they're in phase, perfectly in phase, and the farther
Speaker 1: they are out tells you where you are in that
Speaker 1: three sixty degrees. It is entirely possible that instead of
Speaker 1: having a dummy v o R over the border, they
Speaker 1: instead manipulated the v o R on site to twist it. Essentially,
Speaker 1: so rather than everything starting in phase at true north,
Speaker 1: it started in phase and let's say thirty seven degrees
Speaker 1: off of true norm. And is that something that's possible
Speaker 1: to be done? I don't know. I imagine that it is,
Speaker 1: though I've never heard of it being done, because it's
Speaker 1: it's a very simple system, but I don't know how
Speaker 1: easy it is to turn it and then turn it back.
Speaker 1: And also there were there were other planes hidden into
Speaker 1: that hitting into that saying airport, which is why I
Speaker 1: say turning it and then turning it back, because they
Speaker 1: couldn't have left it in the odd position. I guess,
Speaker 1: like this might be a really dumb question, right, But
Speaker 1: like if we're talking like the flip of a light switch, right,
Speaker 1: you turn the one correct v o R off and
Speaker 1: the wrong one on. Are we talking like you walk
Speaker 1: into that and then ignore everything else, or are we
Speaker 1: because to me, like we're saying, this is a constant
Speaker 1: ping that's happening back and forth between your aircraft and
Speaker 1: your station if you're monitoring it. Okay, So what we're
Speaker 1: saying is like they pinged onto a new one, they
Speaker 1: made the turn, and then they turned the autopilot back on. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what the Margot Commission alleges is that they took
Speaker 1: their they took their new berrying and where they turned
Speaker 1: the autopilot back on, which is then what led them
Speaker 1: to the mountains rod and where they crashed was that
Speaker 1: within two hundred miles away from Maputo is where they
Speaker 1: crashed realistically, but it was within the two mile okay,
Speaker 1: so I guess within the bubble. And then then the
Speaker 1: other question would be right, is that like obviously they're
Speaker 1: not gonna let the autopilot land, so they're going to
Speaker 1: hit a point where they're going to think, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: we should be getting close. They turned that off and
Speaker 1: suddenly they've got two v O R pings coming at them.
Speaker 1: They've got the landing gear again if they're well, but
Speaker 1: you would right if you're coming in for landing you
Speaker 1: don't think you would. You would, especially if somebody was like, no,
Speaker 1: our lights are all So they had they had when
Speaker 1: they hit the three thousand foot ceiling, they had switched
Speaker 1: over to oh what is there? It's visual flight proceeding.
Speaker 1: I can't. Basically, they were trying to do it by thing.
Speaker 1: You're doing it by you're doing it visually at that point,
Speaker 1: so you you turn on you don't you don't use
Speaker 1: the VR. I guess the one don't need you anymore.
Speaker 1: I guess for me, one would think that a responsible
Speaker 1: pilot and navigator would think, okay, we'll give it like
Speaker 1: a minute, right, You're not going to be autopilot too visual.
Speaker 1: You're going to do autopilot t V O R for
Speaker 1: a minute to make sure everything's right, and then visual,
Speaker 1: which is what they did when they corrected. That's what
Speaker 1: they did. They turned the autopilot off and they said,
Speaker 1: m hmmm, the way the VR is not right. We're
Speaker 1: going to correct the course. And then the controllers said, okay,
Speaker 1: when you're at three thousand feet, let us know, So
Speaker 1: they turned the autopilot back on until they were at
Speaker 1: what they thought with three thousand feet, they were at
Speaker 1: the front assistance in the right altitude, right, But so
Speaker 1: one would assume that they would do the same procedure
Speaker 1: where they would turn the autopilot off see the v
Speaker 1: O R. So be careful there, Devon, because you nor
Speaker 1: I are a pilot, and you cannot imply that that
Speaker 1: is the way that the process works. I can't. I
Speaker 1: have tripped I have tripped us up before by making
Speaker 1: the very same assumption, and I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, what I don't really understand is like
Speaker 1: how they can fly all this distance and not at
Speaker 1: some point be saying, where the hell are the lights
Speaker 1: of Maputo? But again they thought that they they said apparent,
Speaker 1: they made statements saying basically they thought the power was out.
Speaker 1: Is that we're I mean, was Maputo suffering a lot
Speaker 1: of brown outs at the time. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: in certain political strife that happened. It wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as if it had the strong youngest grid in the world.
Speaker 1: I would not be shocked that the place experienced power issues.
Speaker 1: You think the airport would have a backup generator. You
Speaker 1: would also think that when the airport said no, our
Speaker 1: lights are on, the pilots would be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we can't see them. So but I think that's the problem. Again.
Speaker 1: That's where the Margot commission said, listen, when you've got
Speaker 1: that response, you should have started pulling up right instead
Speaker 1: of continuing to descend. And in fairness, they said that
Speaker 1: to dead men. So well no they I mean they
Speaker 1: talked for twenty two seconds. I mean there was the
Speaker 1: the request Oh Margot, okay, got it. Yeah, you're right. Um,
Speaker 1: let's let's keep going on with this, this whole false
Speaker 1: beacon bit, because there are people who have said that
Speaker 1: it is possible that there wasn't a false beacon, but
Speaker 1: instead that the manipulated v O R was actually the
Speaker 1: v O R in at the airport in Matsafa, which
Speaker 1: was as we said, only a little bit off point seven.
Speaker 1: But again, like we talked about before, that should have
Speaker 1: drawn more planes in to that airport, should have lured
Speaker 1: more in that direction that were headed to Maputo, always
Speaker 1: saying that they set one, that they changed the frequency
Speaker 1: at the airport to the one that was in Maputo. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no no. Matsafa people have said that the Matsafa,
Speaker 1: the the v O R at Matsafa had been altered
Speaker 1: to appear to be the Maputo v O. I think
Speaker 1: Joe and I were on the same page in interpreting that,
Speaker 1: and that like I thought that, you know, like a
Speaker 1: pilot knee adjusted so that they were on the wrong
Speaker 1: frequency all of a sudden, well within the correct But
Speaker 1: that's what that's what the Margot commission is basically said,
Speaker 1: and they said that the crew screwed up and had
Speaker 1: it on the wrong signal, and but other people have said, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's probably just something that happened in the accident, and
Speaker 1: this was actually the dummy was actually at this other station,
Speaker 1: the or other airport. And the thing that's really weird,
Speaker 1: and this is just one of those hanky things that
Speaker 1: you find in these stories, is that whoever it was
Speaker 1: that was running the the the air traffic control in
Speaker 1: Matsafa was also the same company or the same group
Speaker 1: that was running it in Maputo, and they were said
Speaker 1: to have links to the MOB. So people have said, well,
Speaker 1: obviously that's how they pulled it off because it was
Speaker 1: a mob deal. What are we talking about him, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. The other thing is that there's also
Speaker 1: the problem that we know the conversation that took place
Speaker 1: between the pilots and the air traffic control because we
Speaker 1: have the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.
Speaker 1: We don't, of course have the tapes that took place
Speaker 1: at the end of the at the air traffic controller.
Speaker 1: So it's entirely possible that they were not talking to
Speaker 1: Maputo Air Traffic Control, but in fact we're talking to
Speaker 1: somebody else masquerading as them, which is why the tapes
Speaker 1: were lost because they never actually existed. Kind of hard
Speaker 1: to like do that though, it's not easy, and I
Speaker 1: say it because it's out there. I don't believe it
Speaker 1: because that is again, that is one of those things,
Speaker 1: as you, Joe, are so fond of saying, that is
Speaker 1: too many links in the chain. That is just way
Speaker 1: too complex. It is alright, conspiracy simple, yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: let's keep moving forward here. We're going to go to
Speaker 1: our next theory, which is basically it's the theory that
Speaker 1: there was a signal jammer or a frequency scrambler involved.
Speaker 1: I don't really I don't really get this one. But
Speaker 1: what happens is that this is that remember that news
Speaker 1: crew I said that South African news crew was on
Speaker 1: the site. Somebody that was involved that was on the
Speaker 1: site and the search team walks up with a small
Speaker 1: device that has described as being the size of a
Speaker 1: pound of butter, which is a weird description of size,
Speaker 1: but okay, do you know what kind of looks like?
Speaker 1: But it's just it's it's a strange description to me,
Speaker 1: that's all. But they say that it could have been
Speaker 1: a frequency scrambler. Uh, it was figured out that it
Speaker 1: was indeed not one who was this person anyway, I
Speaker 1: hold this for some random searcher on the site who
Speaker 1: was officially probably a military guy, a South African military guy.
Speaker 1: But that's all I can guess. Oh, he couldn't keep
Speaker 1: a secret very well. Then well he sent it straight
Speaker 1: to the news camera, which makes you wonder if that
Speaker 1: was intentional, because you know, we've talked about Stir in
Speaker 1: the pod. You could i mean pick botha was out there,
Speaker 1: throw and everything he could at this story just to
Speaker 1: see what would stick. So he might have said, hey,
Speaker 1: I've said too many teams, I've already talked to them twice.
Speaker 1: Why don't you go show this thing and say it's this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm making that up. But the point is
Speaker 1: is that it obviously wasn't that. But the scrambler would
Speaker 1: a scrambler would have been effective in disrupting their distance
Speaker 1: measuring equipment and probably their communications. The issue is is
Speaker 1: that we know that their communications were working because again
Speaker 1: we have the cockpit voice reporter. Um, you would think
Speaker 1: that it would have interfered with the v O R
Speaker 1: to the point that the v R signal would have
Speaker 1: been bad, or it would have it wouldn't have worked. Right,
Speaker 1: How this thing, how this thing would have worked, doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense that it's actually kind of a toothless
Speaker 1: claim to me. So I don't I don't put any
Speaker 1: stock into the it was a frequent jam. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I don't see how it could have worked either, because
Speaker 1: if we don't know if this guy was saying that
Speaker 1: it was found in the rede so somebody put a
Speaker 1: frequency grambler on the plane. Theoretically, yes, the navigational equipment.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was just a regular piece of equipment
Speaker 1: from the plane. So we're gonna move on to our
Speaker 1: final theory, which is that the plane was shot down
Speaker 1: to one of the survivors actually said several times that
Speaker 1: he remembered feeling an impact or an explosion just before
Speaker 1: the plane went down. Personally before the plane hit the ground,
Speaker 1: because it doesn't I'm sorry, just to discount this, didn't
Speaker 1: we say that the plane hit a hill and then
Speaker 1: bounced off and then bounced off, and I and then
Speaker 1: feel that is probably what he is interpreting as a explosion,
Speaker 1: because it would be very loud, to be very rough,
Speaker 1: it would throw you about. I can see how you
Speaker 1: would interpret that as an explosion. But doing our due diligence,
Speaker 1: when hadn't I ran down this path a little bit.
Speaker 1: The wreckage was spread over eight hundred fifty meters, which
Speaker 1: is about half a mile, so there's wreckage everywhere. None
Speaker 1: of the wreckage showed any signs of having been hit
Speaker 1: by any kind of explosive device, so like a surface
Speaker 1: to air missile like we were talking about, because you
Speaker 1: would expect to see heat and burn marks and things
Speaker 1: like that on the metal, and none of that was detected.
Speaker 1: We're gonna find residue from explosives also. But there's also
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff that I read out there on
Speaker 1: the internet talking about the fact that there have been
Speaker 1: planes that were brought down by things that were the
Speaker 1: size of a beer can. There was a small explosive
Speaker 1: that if put next to the skin of the plane
Speaker 1: and detonated while they're at altitude like thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: feet up in the air, the pressure is enough to
Speaker 1: start tearing the fuselage apart and can cause a plane crash.
Speaker 1: But that also begs the question of if that's what happened,
Speaker 1: why the hell did they do it at two or
Speaker 1: three thousand feet off the ground when the plane was
Speaker 1: landing rather than when it was in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere and at its max altitude. Well, that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, what's one of the odds. Let's
Speaker 1: let's say they lured it in, it's about to crash anyway,
Speaker 1: Why bother shooting it down? Why why do I save
Speaker 1: yourself an expensive missile? Yeah, so there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of problems with that. Yeah, I mean, I guess my
Speaker 1: question so were we heard the pilot and you know,
Speaker 1: everyone in the cockpit swearing a lot. So I guess
Speaker 1: there could be some sort of like hey, somebody sent
Speaker 1: like a firework or mortar up to explode, and they
Speaker 1: were like crop crop, crop crop or whatever, right, and
Speaker 1: you know, corrected, and that's when they really crash. That
Speaker 1: would make more sense to me, It would explain why
Speaker 1: one of the survivor would say an explosion happened because
Speaker 1: something they saw kind of exploded. It helped to, I
Speaker 1: don't know, disorient the people who were trying to steer
Speaker 1: the plane and help bring it down even more. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, like that's something that I could see,
Speaker 1: but I definitely don't see some sort of missile. What
Speaker 1: you described is something such an extra step that it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense if the plane is already descending
Speaker 1: unless it was. Are you saying that's a diversionary tax
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, so like their alarms are
Speaker 1: going off and they're like, you're close to the ground,
Speaker 1: and then a mortar goes off and they're like, oh
Speaker 1: crap or something worse that there would have been word
Speaker 1: about an explosion. I don't know. If all they're doing
Speaker 1: is like swearing, well they weren't just swearing. They were
Speaker 1: swearing because of the ground proximity warning going off. They're
Speaker 1: talking to each other, they're trying to talk to air
Speaker 1: traffic control. So at that point I would expect that
Speaker 1: if they would saying, think the flayer goes off next
Speaker 1: to the plane or an explosion they would say, or
Speaker 1: an explosion, you know they would say, what the hell
Speaker 1: is that? Yeah? Yeah, they yes, that that is something
Speaker 1: to lead us to believe that something else happened outside
Speaker 1: of the aircraft itself. Well, it could have been that,
Speaker 1: you know, right before they graze, that hilts up maybe
Speaker 1: one of their one of their wheels at the top
Speaker 1: of a tree, you know, and made a big thump.
Speaker 1: I mean, because it is the belly of the plane
Speaker 1: in the trees that hits first. And then like I said,
Speaker 1: it bounced, ye, bounced up and then came right back down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean overall, I just I don't know what to
Speaker 1: think about this. It's so I'm pretty sure I think
Speaker 1: the Market Commission got a right. I think they just
Speaker 1: set their v o R incorrectly and drawn off course
Speaker 1: by that. I think maybe they just got so comfortable,
Speaker 1: right this is we said that this is a flight
Speaker 1: path that they've taken over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were just so comfortable with it that they
Speaker 1: were just I was in this plane something like that,
Speaker 1: this crew specifically, if I remember correctly, So yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: they were just so used to their route they were
Speaker 1: just relying on their instruments because they were literally phoning
Speaker 1: it in. You know, I don't know if they like
Speaker 1: like when I went, for example, to set there b
Speaker 1: o R. I don't know if they did it straight
Speaker 1: from memory. If they had they had a booklet, like
Speaker 1: a pamphlet that had all the all the frequencies for
Speaker 1: all the airports in the region, I guess I would
Speaker 1: assume if it was the capital of the country of
Speaker 1: for which she were, I mean, the president, this is
Speaker 1: their a force one, right, so you know that my heart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't think that they could just get it
Speaker 1: confused with another local airport, because they would have been
Speaker 1: making that, you know, going in all the time, saying
Speaker 1: make sure to be on point seven and not point
Speaker 1: three because we don't want to go to Matsofa. We
Speaker 1: want to go to But I guess in fairness that
Speaker 1: we don't have any way of knowing if that display
Speaker 1: was working correctly, that's possible. Part of did you read
Speaker 1: their report, by the way, either of you get a
Speaker 1: chance to go. I didn't read the entire thing. I
Speaker 1: went to the conclusions and yeah, okay, because I went
Speaker 1: through parts of it, and they do the Margot Commission
Speaker 1: did sort of lay into the design of the display,
Speaker 1: not just for the fact that you know, it was
Speaker 1: the way the three and the seven were displayed, but
Speaker 1: also talking about the fact that there was very little
Speaker 1: backlighting and it was it was hard to see, so
Speaker 1: that could it could have been, unfortunately an honest mistake.
Speaker 1: And I I and I don't. I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: I didn't bother. I probably should have looked, but I
Speaker 1: don't know what the number three and the number seven
Speaker 1: looked like in cyrillic, So it looked like cyrillic are
Speaker 1: in Russian. I looked for it, and everything that I
Speaker 1: found they looked like a normal three in a seven.
Speaker 1: But I've also in the commission's report, they talked about
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a line above both the three
Speaker 1: and the seven. Well, it's true, right, it's three goes
Speaker 1: like this and the seven goes like right. And you're
Speaker 1: you're describing the horizontal bar at the top of bull.
Speaker 1: But you've had a digital clock before, right, Yes, so
Speaker 1: you've got the bar that's horizontal, and then the vertical
Speaker 1: stripe right for THEE, and then you've got you know,
Speaker 1: for three, you've got two additional horizontal bars. But but
Speaker 1: if it's not back lit. I can see why it's
Speaker 1: an issue. It's it's very difficult. What kind of display
Speaker 1: was it was? It was it l eds or digital
Speaker 1: clocks that had the flip cards. No, I don't believe
Speaker 1: it was that in any way, shape or form. I
Speaker 1: think that it was a kind of a display, a
Speaker 1: dial situation that then the lights of the cockpit somehow illuminated.
Speaker 1: But that's a total guess on my part because again
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to find a good picture of it.
Speaker 1: And I found a bunch of flight simulator images, but
Speaker 1: those are not reliable, they're not so I I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. Yeah, for all I know it's an
Speaker 1: analog you know, dial and yeah, yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's actually but I think, yeah, I just don't know
Speaker 1: what I think about that. I think somebody probably put
Speaker 1: the wrong frequency in the in the v O R
Speaker 1: that's mine. I think that's the most likely because you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, the South Africans didn't really they hadn't incentive,
Speaker 1: but you know then they cost a big, a big
Speaker 1: nasty bruising mess on their own territory, you know, so
Speaker 1: if if they had done that, yeah, there's no evidence
Speaker 1: because I mean people would have witnessed things other than
Speaker 1: like not large tents. They would have seen a couple
Speaker 1: of large trucks. And that's exactly right, is that if
Speaker 1: there had plus you know, what the thing is is
Speaker 1: pretty it's a pretty specialized piece of equipment to build
Speaker 1: and move into place and then disassemble and theoretically then
Speaker 1: never use again. Or if Hans Low is telling the truth,
Speaker 1: used one other time and then let's just scrap it
Speaker 1: melted down so nobody notices. Now they would have operated
Speaker 1: with impunity with that thing. Let's just take down all
Speaker 1: of our enemies. Yeah, let's drop dropping planes left. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess part of me was thinking envisioning some sort
Speaker 1: of smaller device that has smaller range that could be
Speaker 1: on the back of a truck. But then I was
Speaker 1: realizing that, like, oh, yeah, planes are going like a
Speaker 1: couple hundred miles an hour, so actually have a truck
Speaker 1: that's keeping up with that. You you are not possibly
Speaker 1: too far off track on that, because if you look
Speaker 1: at about where they took their thirty seven degree turn,
Speaker 1: if you were to go directly west from there, it's
Speaker 1: only about fifteen miles to the South African border. At
Speaker 1: that point because you know, of course borders aren't square
Speaker 1: or straight or anything like that, and so it is
Speaker 1: possible that they could have set up a much smaller
Speaker 1: decoy that had a much smaller range. Other instead of
Speaker 1: saying that the decoy had to have been in in
Speaker 1: the mountains where the plane crashed, so that that is
Speaker 1: technically possible that they could have been that close and
Speaker 1: spoofed it, and that's why it didn't draw in more planes.
Speaker 1: But there's also again, this is that anecdotal stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't know that this is true, and we should probably
Speaker 1: move forward here quite quickly. But other pilots have said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I noticed that my Puoto's v O R
Speaker 1: came on ware earlier than normal that day, which is
Speaker 1: really weird. And yet they all seemed to have tracked
Speaker 1: into the actual Puto airport. There are there are days
Speaker 1: so it went for various reasons. Radio conditions change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about skipping things like yeah, yeah, But that's
Speaker 1: the other reason. I don't think that there was any
Speaker 1: South African intervention here, because you know, they should have
Speaker 1: been already within easier because they were like sixty miles
Speaker 1: away from a Puto roughly where they made their their
Speaker 1: turn right so, and and they said that there was
Speaker 1: another plane that came right before after them that was
Speaker 1: picked up. Their vo are like a hudernating nautical miles
Speaker 1: out right, Yeah, if they've gotten within sixty miles and
Speaker 1: then they suddenly set up autopilot. Off, let's turn onto
Speaker 1: v O R. See what it says. Oh, it says
Speaker 1: it's over here. I think they I think they set
Speaker 1: their v O R the wrong frequency. You you might
Speaker 1: be right, you and the market commission might be right again.
Speaker 1: We said this a couple of times. I'm I'm completely
Speaker 1: unsure at this point. Yeah, that's because otherwise they would
Speaker 1: have picked up the R. All right, Well, I guess
Speaker 1: that means that we should get into, as Devin calls it,
Speaker 1: business end in business housekeeping. House cleaning is a much
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