Thinking Sideways: Death of Samora Machel

we're going to talk about a mystery. Of course, because by the time this episode comes out, there will be some presidential stuff going on. So I figured we'd talk about a president who happens to be in a different country ex President and a dead president prime minister president. You know, he's always referred to as president most of the time, so I'm gonna call him a president. Okay, so not the guy who swam away from wait, from the ocean. He was trying to get away from that ocean.

It caught up. Now this week we're going to talk about the death of Mozambican President Samara Michelle, who died along with thirty three other people when the presidential plane which was a tuple of t U one three four A three crashed into a South African hillside on October nine, six um and it's believed by many people to have been an assassination, which was executed by intentionally crashing the plane.

President at all. Before we get into the story, I do want to say that this is a listener suggestion. This is an ash story. Oh yeah, we haven't done a way Ashes stories in a long time. You haven't. And we haven't even gotten through half of his suggestion. I know. I didn't even intend. I didn't realize this was an suggestion until I got to it. And by the way, it's another suggestion. We're like through the first thirty. No,

we love it ash um. Okay, So before we get into the story the crash, we do need to cover some background information on both Michelle as well as some other people and the area, because there was a bunch of turmoil in the region and that plays in it plays into the story. So first, let's start with the country of Mozambique, which is where some more Michelle was the president of Bob Dylan wrote a song about it.

Did he really came out in the seventies, I think it was right after the decolonization and it was taken over by Marxist. Okay, because for a second I was thinking you were talking about there was a time where Bob Marley had gone to the same region, but that was for another country which suddenly I don't have the name of, but I know it's further along in my

script and I'll call it out when we get there. Um, Okay, if you're your geography, isn't that great with with South Africa and not the country, the area the southern part of Africa, Because that I was just had a moment where I was like, uh, you keep saying the beak is the country, but then you're saying in South Africa. Now I'm confused, So the southern region of Africa not

South Africa. Correct. If you are familiar with or not familiar with it, you will look at a map and on the very bottom of the tip you will see the country of South Africa, and to the right of it on the coast is Mozambique, just directly to the north eastern side, and then there's a small country sandwich in between South Africa and Mozambique, which is called Swaziland. So that's where it is, and it's a Swazilands and its bitsy teeny tiny country. It kind of sandwiched. It's

completely surrounded, its surround really landlocked. But yeah by those two countries, surrounded on three sides by South Africa and one side. Yeah. Yeah, for about four hundred years, Mozambique was Portuguese colony. And okay, so I got a safer second. I didn't really I knew Portugal head colonies. I didn't realize that it's still had colonies this far into the modern era for some reason. I mean, it's just a failing on my part for from a historical perspective apparently,

but I was like, it's a Portuguese colony. I thought the Portuguese lost all our colonies like two hundred years ago. We know not everything, but I mean most places that had colonies still have colonies. Is that not accurate? My problem is is that I'm used to the British, who you know, returned all of their colonies primarily or most of them. They they don't have, but like two colonies anymore. It feels like and I know that's not the right number.

Please don't send an email. I know too isn't the correct number, but there was a lot of turmoil in the last forty or fifty years and they have of those countries of all returned to their own governance. Yeah, in some fashion. Mostly most of the eclonization took place in the sixties, you know, a few held onto the seventies. Yeah. So anyway, this was a Portuguese colony, and as Joe was just talking about, in the sixties there was a

lot of revolt against the Portuguese government. A grilla liberation group became very active starting around four and they were openly fighting the Portuguese government. The name of this group is the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, which is kind of a mouthful. So thankfully everybody uses the acronym for LIMO, which is much easier to say, I do too. For LIMO fought against Portugal and made progress towards their

goal of taking back the country, slowly but surely. One thing that really helped them is that they weren't the only colony struggling to do this, and there was actually liberally Asia movements in Angola, Portuguese Guinea and as as well as Mozambique, and in nineteen seventy four, after fighting wars on multiple fronts, there was a coup in Portugal which brought down the existing government and it was replaced by one that was totally willing to grant independence to

the colonies. So the short version is Mozambique granted its independence in nineteen seventy five and for Limo, being the main force, took power. They became the governance at that time, and they quite quickly kicked out the two hundred and fifty thousand Portuguese citizens who were living in country, so they were literally taking everything back. A lot of African countries came to regret though, Uh there was there was

positives and there was negatives. They there they did leave a pretty significant gap in terms of commerce, and uh there was some other areas that that really struggled because of it. Men in the they most of them have overcome that. It took them time. That's as it always does. Well, yeah, I mean they when you're a colony, right, all of

your infrastructure is run. But the power colonizational power is that it's much easier to say yeah, um, so I mean, you know, as soon as they say you know what, you're cut off it's like people who know how to run the machinery. Well, it's you know, it's just like you know, being like a college kid and getting cut off from your parents all of a sudden, you're you have no idea what you're doing and you have to kind of fend for yourself. And it's a great analogy.

It's really hard, That's exactly what it is. Yeah, But luckily most of these places have really at least kind of thing. They've grown up to use your college kid analogy. They've grown up. I have to say, the of all the all the countries out there that were forward colonies, the ones that are consistently doing the best are the ones that were colonized by the British. You know, I mean they really are. That's accurate. Actually, yes it is.

And you look at like you know, Believes to India, to Canada, America to where is that that other place? That other place, yeah, that other place. Yeah. Even in Africa, the African countries that were colonized by the Brits, they're doing great. I wonder if there is a better access strategy that happened there. Uh, you know what, I don't know, And I think that's a long road for us to

run down. Yeah, let's let's not go there. Let's let's keep focused on Mosbeak here because we're still talking about them. Yea boswa is the country got it, okay. So when for Limo came into power as the ruling government, they made the entire state a Marxist lenisis is that how you say that in Leninist thank you adding an extra ele in there? A Leninist Marxist Leninist political organization, a real formula for success. And so what that meant is that they set up a socialist state for its part.

The Soviet unions obviously very happy about this. They have a new friend in town. But that didn't really didn't really make everybody else in the area happy. But we'll get into that in a second. Um Michelle Samoura Michelle, he was involved with for Limo from its beginnings. He very quickly rose to power through the organization, such so that in nineventy he was elected the leader of the organization.

So in seventy five, when the Portuguese left and for Limo stepped into the government, choose he was kind of the natural, the natural person to take over, and he didn't it wasn't. There's a whole bunch of backstory here. He wasn't immediately just the number one guy, but we're just kind of shortening this to keep it simple. And

the important thing he was president. He was president. And the other important thing to know is that almost immediately there was detractors who were not happy with him or for Limo, and a counter group or counter movement began, and that was the Mozambican National Resistance, which in the beginning went by the acronym of just M and R.

But later on they change their name. And this name is sort of recent, but we'll use it just because you're gonna see it most of the reading is Rhanamo and they opposed the communist based government and they actually began a civil war in nineteen seventy six. Yeah, I didn't do. So you can see country gets it's it's independence and then immediately goes to war with itself and the year later, like that's not a good thing. Listen, it's just the truncated version. They're just getting all of

the crap out of the way. They're doing it fast, and then you know, they get that out of their system and then they have a great path to become a really productive, amazing country. There you go that that must have been the plan. I'm not sure. I didn't look up any stats on how productive and amazing they are. They actually there's been a lot of political changes in

that country over the last forty years. But it's only been forty years, right, I mean they've only run their country for forty years, where when we fourty years out like not. Um, So let's keep going on. We're gonna talk a little bit more about the area. So we've got Michelle, he's now in power. We talked about the neighbors, which were South Africa and Rhodesia, which is modern day Zimbabwe.

By the way, Rhodesia was the one that I was thinking of that Marley went to that he was he went there, did a big concert during their whole run. Also talked about Rhodesia when we talked about the Lake City Quiepels did we Yeah, the Rhodesian Army. You're right, we did stop coming together. But I think we have to go to Rhodesia. That's what is telling this country that doesn't exist anymore. Okay, So South Africa and Rhodesia, who were both under white control, do not like this

country that is now a socialist state. They you know, they're not fans of communism, and they begin to funnel support and money and weapons and shelter to the folks that are involved in Renamo, And uh, yeah, that's that's not very very cool to Michelle. He he doesn't like that. He actually has a lot of very stern words to say to both governments for that, but then again for

his interfering their politics too. Yeah, because he was he was at the same time doing the same thing for the a n C, which is the African National Council, which eventually would take over when what's that African National Congress what did I call it? Council? Thank you over? But they would, you know, they would be the ones who would take over when the apartheid government in South Africa would eventually crumble several years later, more than several

it's the along a long time. I meant several years after the death of Michelle. I apologize, I'm mixing my timeline there. That's my own fault. I think it was ninety four. So yeah, they did. They struggled against that for a long time. Okay, but let's jump ahead in time, We're gonna jump ahead. We've got a little bit of

the backstory of the region. Let's jump to six. There was a meeting of the heads of state of several different African nations being held on the nineteenth of October six in Mambola, Zambia, and the goal was to, using air quotes here, encourage the dictator of Zaire to stop supporting the insurgent groups that were fighting in Angola at the time. As I understand it from the reading, Michelle's motivation to go there was also to help quote unquote

encourage the other leaders there to stop support being Namo. Well, yeah, I mean that makes sense. Right. You go to a place and you say, hey, listen, yeah, I'll support you in this if you support me in that. Yeah. It's yeah, it's it's a given take. That's way this works. Yeah, that's what diplomacy is. I think it. Maybe diplomacy is

basically threats. That's why you how you know you're an American? Okay, So Michelle, along with a bunch of his staffers and journalists, they flew to this meeting on the presidential plane, which, as I had said in the beginning, was a Tupa Lev TU one thirty four eight ash three, which is a Soviet design, And you don't say I do with a name like that, you do. It was a Soviet design and manufactured twin engine jet laner. The first thing I did when I heard it started going to the stories.

I looked at the crash history of the Tupi Lev and actually that's not as bad as I thought would be. No, but it's not the safest plane in the world. It turns out to be not the worst either. This type of plane, though it had been around for at that time twenty years, and this particular plane had been in service with the government for six years. So it's a modern plane with the modern navigational equipment of the time. A telegraph did not, but it did have a fax machine.

But something to note, uh this is I always found this little strange is that the crew were actually Russian. They were employed by the USSR and they operated the plane for the Mozambican government, which I just I don't know. Something about that seems a little odd to me. Well, they probably wanted the Russians to be changing the tapes and the bugging devices. Yeah, I mean, I guess they kind of yeah. I mean it a little bit makes

sense to me. I can see it. It's a way to hear, we'll give you this plane, you know, for a discount, and then we'll give you a crew, and let's pay for the crew. I mean, you're leasing out the crew at that point. I get it, but it always just seemed a little odd to have to be leasing the crew, right, I mean, if they could just pay them directly to or the USSR they were they

were Soviet employees. Yeah, I mean if the Soviet Union is really just trying to play that role of like big brother, like, yes, we will take you to encourage them to continue the Soviet way or a socialist way. So this is one of those things they do, is kind of a small gesture. And then also you know, get tons of intel and all that stuff because they're bugging the plane. As Jeff said, um so well, let's

uh so enough about the crew. We're gonna go to We're going back to the date of the nineteenth of October of that six The meeting ended and because of Michelle had as the reading always says, he had an important meeting the next day, which it turned out was actually his wife's birthday, though a lot of people say that he also had some other quote unquote really important meetings that he had to attend. Let's be honest, you're a married man. Yeah, it's his wife's birthday. It's at

a very important meeting to be there for. So well, she was with him, So they had they had gone to Umbala, and and she had gone with him, and so the rather than they've been offered to stay overnight, she probably didn't really want to. Yeah, they didn't. They didn't want to, so he said, no, we're going to go home today during the day though. Yeah. Yeah, So what happens here is, uh, they decided that they're gonna go ahead. They're gonna fly home to Maputo City, which

is in the capital of Mozambique. And the plane leaves at six forty at night, and it takes kind of this serpentine path, but it flies basically southeast towards Maputo, and the weather is clear and the flights estimated to take about three hours just just under Actually from here, we know what happened because of the fact that we what were recovered were the cockpit voice recorders, the CVR and the flight data recorder or the black boxes everybody

likes to call them. And all those bugs at the Russians had placed and none of the bugs at the Russians had placed. Um, so we've got we've got all that data. At nine o'clock that night, the so this is they've obviously left and they're flying home. At nine o'clock that night, the crew contacted Maputo air traffic control to let them know that they're about forty minutes out.

And then sixteen minutes later, by the way, it was not but it was a low it was a small moon if I remember right, and the moon had not yet risen. The moon wouldn't rise until shortly after the crash, like literally ten minutes after the crash, what moon there was would have come up, so that that would have maybe helped things here. Like I said, they contact the air traffic control, they say they're about forty minutes out. Sixteen minutes later they contact them again, uh, and let

them know that they're ready to begin their descent. Yeah, thirty five minutes something like that. Yeah, it's at this point that I should explain something about how the plane was navigating to Maputo, and that is that they were using a vhs omnidirectional radio range finder, which we're from here. I'm going to call a v O R because that's

much easier that actually ranged that just a beacon. It's a beacon, but that's that's part of the name in a nutshell with the v v O R is is it's a signal that's broadcast from a location that allows the pilot to determine their relation to that beacon. Yeah. And it's because there's a phase matched pair of signals that are being sent and through that match or mismatch, they can tell how far they are off in a three sixty degree circle. Is it like sonar um? No,

not exactly. Here's how it works. Yeah, no, and believe me, I I got a hold of our experts. Thank you to all of our experts for their how up with this? I really hope this makes sense. Here's what happens is there is a signal I believe it's a pulsing signal that is constantly being sent out like a pin at the same time, and that's being sent out in all directions at the same time. At the same time, there

is a second signal being sent out. And in the old days it used to be from a antenna that was actually a physically rotating antenna, and it would rotate twenty to thirty times a minute. But it is then also put in a directional fashion shooting out that signal so that they both start in line at true north.

And so if it then rotates ninety degrees to the east, it's a quarter out of sinc due south, it's now it's now half out of sink and then three quarters and then they sink back up because the new rotation starts. I hope that makes sense. Basically, it's a spiral on top of another circle. Is how works. It allows them to figure out where they are in relation to it. It probably makes sense enough for it to matter. Yeah.

And the other thing to remember is these are at the airports what they're heading for, and other airports have them also, but on different radio frequencies. Correct, they are not set on the same frequency. That would be confusing well.

And and the thing is is that they also send out back in the day, they would send out a Morris code signal at the same time that would say essentially this is Maputu Airport, over and over and over and over, so that you didn't tune into it and start to fly to it and then realize you were going to the wrong airport. You could pick that code up right away, but would you use other airports signals to navigate off of, like knowing, hey, we're two hours

into the flight, we should be passing this city. I under if I understand it correctly, Yes, okay. It is a method of navigation, not only to a specific destination, but to know where you are in relation to other places as you pass through their signal path. You can actually I just these compass and autopilot I think for most of it, and then just do corrections off when you pass an airport. Maybe, but I just wanted to make sure that that would be a thing that they

would be switching between frequencies during the flight. They could be. Yes, Um, so the flight crew is using the Maputo v O r UM. That's how they're guiding into the airport because that's where they're going. I don't know if they actually picked it up yet. They they were only half hours, Joe. The vrs have a range of up to two miles, and they were forty minutes out, which made them about sixty miles or so away from the airport, so they were definitely in its range and they were definitely going

to be picking it up there flying that slow. Well, they were, they were about to descend. You don't start to send two miles out, do you. I don't know. The point is they were, they were within it's it's It's envelope. They had definitely been picking it up, and they were they had tuned into it because that's where they were going to head to. They go ahead, and like I said, they tell air traffic control that they're

going to start their descent. Air traffic control says, listen, go ahead and tell us when you're at when your altitude reaches three thousand feet or if you see our runway lights, contact us then and then we'll talk. Yeah, I know, it's really funny. And if we're talking clear night, yes,

clear knight, not a cloudy night anything like that. The mystery really gets going at about nine ten at night because that's when the plane, for a reason that nobody knows, made a thirty seven degree turn to the right, so it banked and turned west because it was headed south at that point, So now it's heading not southeast but southwest,

which nobody knows why that happened. On the cockpit voice recorder, you can hear the captain remarking about it, to which the navigator says, v O R indicates that way, okay, and so that's what he says. So and it's significant, right that it's a Soviet crew at this point. Is so presumably it's not a crew that's used to making this run. This seems like a sort of run that that would be incorrect. This crew had been making this run. They had been flying in and out of this airport

quite a few times. It wasn't like it was their first time. Okay, that's weird. Yeah, it's it seems like he would kind of be used to it. Yeah. Now, granted today we're a little spoiled because everybody uses GPS and it's so much more precise. But you know, they were like the instrument says go that way, go that way, and it's a pretty big bank to make those it's a pretty big course correction. Yeah, And essentially they would have had to believe they were like, you know, way

way far off to the east. They would have had to be heading out into the ocean by accident. Well, and they would have I mean, I'm sure that they would have been used to seeing certain landmarks and that geographic stuff, right, and so very true. Right, So even if the navigator is like, well it says to go that way, you would think the pilot would be like, but those are the mountains that should be there, like what, I don't think it? Right? Yeah, it was dark, so

that's the thing. As you guys said, there was no moon yet, and when they were flying there was navigational aids. They weren't seeing things that they were expecting to be seeing, like certain lights or certain um radio signals should have been coming and they should been picking up certain things, and they were and where they were commenting on that they were, and they believed that the power was out in the city, so they figured that, oh, the electricity

must be out. I think the captain says something like, you know, it's it's running dark, chaps, or something like that. It seems a little I guess it seems a little odd to me that they would have made radio contact with the tower and not been like, oh, hey, by the way, So they do because when they hit the three thousand feet mark, they get ahold of the air traffic control and they say, we're three thousand feet. And by the way, we can't see the runway lights. Can

you check the runway lights? Yeah, go double check that they're on look out the window, buddy. Um. And they actually asked that twice. So they asked them to check that twice. Um. They're in their descent. They think that they're, you know, within a thousand feet of the ground at this point, and they're ready to land, so they've dropped their landing gear or lower the landing here I should say, the thousand feet of the ground at that time. Were

they well, they thought they were. You know, if I remember, I think that the power told them to descend to three thousand feet and stayed three thousand, and they had been. The problem was they had continued to descend, presuming that they were on target and that in another thousand feet or so they'd be on the ground. The problem is, of course, they didn't stop at three thousand feet, even though nobody confirmed that. Yeah, they kept saying, I don't

know what's going on here. Um, so they are, they're about twenty miles or twelve miles out or twenty kilometers out at this point, and then the ground proximity warnings start going off, which is the warning that says, hey, the ground is right under you, pull up, but how how far right under you? Okay, so right right under you because I think the ground warning that you're going to hit that house. Yeah, they went off, and they actually descended another two hundred feet I think it was.

They kept going down. And that's another thing that nobody can really panis to why they did that. They kept going down even though the alarms going off. I mean, the crew is swearing they can't figure out what's going on. They're not happy. I believe that. I believe they thought the ground proximity alarm was just defective and they decided that apparently, and they kept talking to the air traffic

control for another twenty two seconds. Yeah, I mean, I guess you know, if if your ground proximity thing is going off, right, you would assume that either you're seeing lights from the ground because you're pretty dang close to the ground, or your sensor is faulty and you're where you think you are and you believe that you're in the spot that you have been in a hundred times so far. So this part is bad. Yeah. The problem was is that it turned out the ground proximity warning

was right, It was not wrong. As I said, they had the wheels down. The plane continued to descend, so you know, the goes off. Twenty two seconds later, the plane crashes into a hillside. So, as I understand it, what happened is the wheels and the belly of the craft hit the top of one of the hills in the area that it was in. It bounced off of that hill into the next hill, didn't go nose first in, but you know, went into it, at which point one of the wings hit a tree and it starts tumbling.

There was a total of forty four people on this plane. Nine of them survived, so thirty four of them there thirty four including samhere Michelle, it was thirty four deaths lone of there were forty four people and nine survived. Oh no, okay, so here's the here's the weird thing about the numbers. Thank you for pointing that out, because I remember reading this and then it caught me. Math

isn't my thing. But one of the people that survived the crash initially died from the injuries two months later, so that's why it's okay, that's what screw me. Up. So there's where I did my math. Nine people survived initially, but then one of them died two months later after that, so technically eight survivors to st Yeah yeah, no, not

not awesome. Um, but one of the one of the people that was on there that we talked about was Samara Michelle's wife, Grasha Michelle, and you might recognize her name because she would later go on many years later, about a decade or more later, she married Nelson Mandela, so she was his wife. It puts her in one of those really unique categories as being the first first

lady of two different nations, which is something that you know. Obviously, she's the first that's never really happened before she and she was she was Nelson Mandela's second wife. Correct, it was her second marriage and his second, which is fine. Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious at this point that the plane was not in fact over Maputo Airport, Puto maybe was not suffering some kind of weird power loss, and

actually they had banked into the forest. Well what had happened is because of that thirty seven degree turn, they ended up in the La Bombo Mountains, which is on the border of Mozambeque, Swaziland and South Africa corners. Yeah, it's a weird little Noman's land. It's about thirty five miles away from Maputo, which I guess would be fifty kilometers. Um, so it's yeah, it's a it's a weird hilly area

and the elevation is somewhere around feet. But it is where they would expect had they been on the correct course and then banked the way they did, That's where they would expect them to have been, right. Okay, I just want to make sure based on the time and the speed and they're travel that is correct. I just want to make sure that we're saying that like that

made sense. The turn didn't make sense. But yeah, the term is one of the big mysteries along with why they why they didn't didn't seems like with planes, um,

the turn is often turn can spell disaster. Yeah. Now, I think it's also going to be pretty obvious here that you know, because they've been communicating with air traffic control when they suddenly stopped communicating and then didn't say anything again to Maputo, that they launched a huge search and rescue operating because they knew their president was on that plane. Absolutely correct. The plane went down just after

nine o'clock at night. But because of where it crashed in that weird little Noman's land, that little tri corner as you called it, Um, it wasn't until about midnight that the first South African police officers arrived at the crash scene. So you keep saying just after nine pm, I think it was like, yeah, I just want to be actually, no, wait a second, if they made the turn at yeah, I guess it would be around when

the when their last communications were. I just yeah, because for me, you know, a little after nine is not and I will accept that. Um. So the plane goes down, it's not till after midnight that the first South African police officers get there. Yeah, several hours. And that's because you know, obviously it's not a highly populated area. It's not as if cell phones are ubiquitous. It's you know, you gotta do things by driving to places to get phone,

you know, find people. Yeah, well there's not like that. There was a village right nearby, right, but the village had to then contact and then somebody had to come out and they had to be like, wow, there was a big explosion there and then somebody had to take them seriously, and so they get there about midnight. About an hour later, the first medics arrive and it's not until quarter to four a m. That a medical chopper

actually arrives to transport the survivors to the hospital. So these poor people have been on the ground literally for about six hours. So that didn't help the mortality rate among the crash victims. Now you're probably asking yourself, well, during that time, what were the South Africans doing the police what were they doing? And the answer would be they were collecting paperwork. Were they not also administering first Okay, yes, I'm not being fair. I'm not being fair. We're doing

what they could pulling people out of the wrecords. But at the same time they were running around picking up every single piece of paper that was floating around. They were opening luggage to find any and everything of import that they then were carting away to copy because this is an an intelligence bonanza at this point. Yeah. One of the things that they find and they sees is the cockpit voice recorder. They sees it under the auspice of fear that it can be tampered with, which is

the weirdest reasoning I've ever heard of. I mean, it technically is their jurisdiction, but they, the South Africans did a lot of weird stuff during this. But I'm just saying that, like I weird or not, we can say it's like super nefaragous that they see this thing, but it's their jurisdiction. Of course they're going to take it. You're right, Well, it's also besides, I mean, did they see did they just did they just secure it? Yeah,

they took it. Well I know they took it, but I mean it seems like you should take it and put it somewhere, and you took it, wouldn't get it, didn't take a while to get it back to he had to do it under threat of legal action. Like

it's it's really hokey what happened here. But um, if we move forward in time, I think it's around six am, but maybe a little before that, the South African Minister of Ford Affairs Pick both arrives and they also by the way about this time or shortly thereafter, let a South African news crew on the site and pick both of begins to talk to the camera crew and he starts making really strange statements, which in retrospect everybody said,

we're diversionary tactics, but they were still really weird because he starts saying things like, well, obviously the flight crew was drunk on vodka because they were Russian, or obviously the plane was old and poorly kept, which didn't actually turn out to be true. I'm gonna say something here, are you sure he wasn't just racist? I'm not going to respond to that because I can't. I don't know, because this, like this sounds like somebody being like, well,

oh they were Russians. Oh well they were drunk on vodka and like doing Mother Russia the favor like that, like you know exactly where you're going. It had the same thought myself. It could not necessary because the rescues are white. It's racism. Okay, we're just gonna leave that alone. He also continued to make other weird state ments. Uh. He said that obviously the meeting that Samora Michelle had been at wash was meant to set up a plot

overthrow the government of Malawi. Uh. And then he also made statements about how Samora Michelle were both his and President Botha's dear friends. By the way, there might be a bit of confusion there. Pick was the foreign uh foreign affairs minister. There was also the president at the time, who was of no relation of South Africa, also had

the last name of sort of. It was just a weird little thing there, But like I said, you know, none of his claims were true and nobody could ever ever pin down why he was doing it because he did it for like a year. At the same time, the bodies of everybody who died in the crash, they're collected and autopsies would eventually be done on four members. Are actually a total of seven people, four of whom were members of the flight crew, and then three others

who were passengers on the plane. But there's for and so there's that seven, and then there's also another group of six bodies that were not autopsy that when they were returned to the Mozambican government, had these weird seven m seven millimeter long cuts on their necks that were stitched closed and they were done postmortem, and it's believed that that was done to collect blood samples. But it's the weirdest way to collect blood samples. Since I don't

know needles or a thing. But maybe this is a field method to do it. I don't know. The Karatid agree where that set. I believe so. Yes, and they were postmored postmortem. They were also proven according to the Mozambique Medical Commission, they weren't the cause of death for these people. So it's not as if somebody cut their throws open and stitched them closed to keep it quiet. I guess for me, the like the weird part is

stitching them back closed. His horror. Yeah, like why you know, like if they their dead bodies and you're not trying to hide respect. I mean, that's the only thing I can come up with is maybe it's out of respect to the dead. I mean, you're already like keeping from leaking everywhere. I don't know, super glue man, you're laughing, but I mean, like that's like, I know, that's why

I was invetted. I don't I know. Um, Okay, So we had already talked about here a little bit, the fact that there was a town nearby that was the town of Bezzini. And yeah, yeah, okay, this is not my language, so I'm going to run with that is Bazzini. Um, and those people did the people of that village did go to the site, but they also make claims about how when the soldiers arrived they chase them away, which I don't. You got to secure the scene, right, Yeah,

that's exactly my point. I don't. I don't find that bit weird suspicious. Okay, So by the way, um, we should probably go back to Mozambique for a second, because they're still looking for their president and it's not till ten to seven in the morning that the South African government lets them know that they found the plane and then they told him it was in a different spot, did kilometers away the different spot? Things suspicious? The you know,

waiting realistically a couple hours. I mean, I don't know how fast ward travels that, oh, especially right we're talking like analog days. The phone still is a thing. But I don't know. But I'm saying that, like, Okay, so plane goes missing, right, so your air controller is going to call your government and you're going to mobilize your military. You're not going to call every single branch of the

police in all of the country surroundings. So I will rebut that a little bit, which is that there foreign ministers had gotten ahold of the South Africans to let them know. So the South African government knows this but gets a call ethics four or five in the morning saying, hey, we found this plane and a crash and we're pretty sure the president of Mozambeeque is on it. But we're assuming that. Um, the people who were contacted in the South African government were also likes well that they were

letting right. So at that point they could have turned around and said, we think we found your plane, but we're I'm just saying that, like you're you're attributing. I just think it could be bad communication. It could be also that they just wanted to give like wait until people were up, because at this point, planes down, people are dead. Just let him sleep in for a few

more hours. Maybe they were just being considerate college dorm rules. Okay, I think that is less likely than like bad communication, because like if they're I mean, they're if if they've been communicating, hey we lost our president, they're already awake. Everyone knows they're awake. But yeah, okay, well, let's just assuming that they wanted a few extra hours just to you know, gather up more intail. And I think that's

what I think. That's what it is. They were busy photo copying and photographing everything they could get their hands and making weird cuts and bodies right. Well, that didn't happen till later the an investigation is launched into this crash. This is based on the Chicago Convention, which was agreed to by the countries in that area of several years prior.

The crash was investigated jointly by the countries of South Africa because that's where the plane had crashed, by the country of Mozambique because it was their plane, and by the Soviet Union because they were the manufacturer of the plane. So we've got three organizations involved in this joint investigation. But it didn't last very long because both the Mozambecon and the Soviet delegations pulled out because they felt like

the South Africans just weren't involving them. They were they were cutting them short on things, they weren't giving them all the information. So in the end it ended up being a South African investigation. It was headed up by Judge Cecil margot Uh and it's commonly referred to as the Margot Commission, and that name might sound a little familiar to anybody who's listening to this podcast, because if you remember the seven crash of South African Airlines flight,

we covered that while back. The Margot Commission also investigated that crash. So there's a weird another weird connection. And the longer we do this, the more connections between every story. Oh my god, they're all connected. I was just gonna say, it's the Octavius. Oh man, I'm not as young and quick as you once were. Whipper snapper already, um so moving it was swamp gas, right? They did not because

there was a swamp nearby. No, um no. The Margot Commission actually concluded that the whole thing was caused by crew error. Uh they were. They said that the crew was negligent in their duties, which is why they made both the turn and why they didn't follow the procedure when the ground proximity warnings went off. Basically, they're saying there was no reason for them to turn. That was a bad move and they should have stopped descending or pulled up when the warnings went off. Well I would too.

This might be where Russian technology quality comes, quality control comes into because it comes into play because they might have thought it's just it's just not working right, you know, because the crew itself, the ground proximity along the crew themselves thinking that about the because I think in the faulty part, yeah, I mean, if that thing is going off, the only reason you're not going to pull up unless

you're drunk on vodka. Course, And the only reason you're not going to pull up is if you think it's just yeah, I guess, uh, well, I'll wait intil theory, because you know, what the thing is that it's funny you say that because there is some stuff in the commission.

But the Soviets themselves, they were not happy with the results of the Margo Commission, and they submitted a minority report of their own, and that is where they they put out or put forward the idea that the plane was actually led off course intentionally by a decoy v O R. So that that signal we talked about before somebody spoofed it and led them astray. That really didn't get a lot of traction at that time, But fifteen

years later the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was open. Yeah, and I don't so the TRC was set up after the apartheid government fell apart, and from the way I understand it, what it did is it looked into situations where humans right violations were made with no care by the South African government, and they were they would help do what they could, either documented or possibly fixed, do

what they could. Now, I don't know why they got involved in this case short of the fact that they that Mandela's now wife was involved with it, or the fact that people have been saying for years that the South African government was responsible for the doubting of this plane. You know, they they actually gave a little bit of credence to the idea that there was a decoy v O R, whereas the Margot Commission completely poo pooed that.

Um so, I mean, I don't know that. The other thing that they did do is they couldn't confirm that there was a decoy. But the other thing that they did do is they really throw dirt at the South African government and kind of said maybe they knew something more than they had led on. By the fact that it had been confirmed that the South African government had been tracking Michelle's plane prior to the turn, so they had known where it was for quite a while, and

they didn't. They didn't. They never contacted him to say, hey, hey guys, you know your way off course, or be hey guys, you're in South African airspace, or see, hey guys, you should stop going down there's a mountain there. Well, first of all, they didn't know what the flight was, the flight subjective was then, and and it's not their job, and the crash just they didn't. They didn't spend any time in South African airspace to speak of. I'm in

total agreement with that. The they should have called as soon as they hit South African airspace is just bad to me because it doesn't make any sense. They were literally in South African air sprace for I believe about thirty seconds at the speed they were trapped. So there's not a there's not a whole lot to that. Okay, So now let's get into theories. And I've got our theories broken up into two sections, very simple, real or not real. No, and don't say suicide because that's not

a theory either. Know that the sections are who done it and how? And the who done its section is actually really really easy because there are so many players involved in the area at the time that anybody could have benefited from taken Michelle out. He had already survived several assassiny allegedly, I actually should say that allegedly had survived several assassination tempts in in the recent past. The South Africa government didn't like him because a he was

he was a socialist. Uh. There was also the racial aspect of the apart Aid government versus Michelle. There's also Rhinomo. They would have had the group that was opposed to the government since seventy six. They had a stake in the game because if if they took out the president, maybe they can take out the socialist government or you know, move themselves into positions of power. Um. There's the president of Malawi who didn't like Michelle because Michelle had the

president of Malawe. What this guy had been doing is he's been doing with a lot of people. Had he been sheltering NAMO soldiers. And as retaliation, Michelle had said, if you keep doing that, I Am going to put missiles all along the border of my country and any of your planes that come into our airspace will be shot down, which effectively would shut down a lot of trade for them because things were flying in and out

of the country. So that guy didn't like him. There's also he had so one of the things that you will here said is that he was going home that day so that the next meeting he the next day he could have a meeting to restructure both the government and the military. Because it turns out socialist systems are notorious for corruption what and he was one of those few guys that in that kind of regime didn't stand

for that. He had had evidently gone after people before who were accused of being corrupt, got rid of competitors by accusing the corruption there. That is a very good point, But I'm going to make him sound much more noble than that and continue to say that he fought corruption in his government. But the point is those people may have said, uh no, he is not taking me out of this cush push chair that I'm in. I'm taking

that plane. Yeah. The thing about it is when your president for life, you know that sooner or later people we're just gonna keep piling up enemies for life. That's the interesting thing. But he might as well have been effectively he was he was. He was. He was in office for what eleven years it was it was socialists, So there were party elections. But yeah, I mean those those are easy to rig I'm not I'm not foolish enough to think that they were. They were free elections.

But I get what you're and the problem with who done it? Could have been anybody. I mean it literally could have been anybody, because there was things to be benefited but for or gained by a lot of people. I'm doubting them the least. Oh yeah, no, I really think the Soviets, based on what they did, I would say they probably didn't do it. I would say that they did interfere at a certain by putting out the accusations at the South Africans, and we'll be talking about this,

you know that they duped them into crashing. They were definitely stirring the pot. And then there was a lot of stirring the pot. Yeah, yeah, I was delivered on your part. I doubt they even believed it. You know. Well, let's uh, let's go ahead and talk about the first theory of how so this is actually along the lines of what Joe was talking about, which is that the theory is is that indeed this was crew error and it oh, actually this, since this is a different one,

I apologize from what Joe was saying. This is that it was Crewe error and that they did in fact make a mistake with the v o R because they was just drunk on vodka. No, no, no, all of that was proven wrong. No, you know that's wrong. That's what we were at. I'm positive I learn that there are autopsies turned up a fair amount of alcohol in their systems, but of course, on your body decomposes, it was nothing outside of the range of what you would

find in a normal decomposing body. It's absolutely correct. So the the official line or belief of the Margot Commission is that the crew had made the error of setting one of their two v o R receivers to the wrong frequency. Maputo uses hundred and twelve point seven Mega hurts. Matsafa Airport, which is a hundred and twenty miles away in Swaziland, uses a hundred and twelve point three Mega hurts. The two airports that are kind of close together, I

would think that would space them further apart. Yeah, I I really I looked at that. Mc guys, really come on. But the Margot Commission blamed the mistake on the design of the receiver in the airplane, saying that the numbers three and seven the way they were displayed, looked similar. And I'll be honest, I've never seen an image of their v O R receiver, um, so I can't I

can't support that or deny it at all. But I also kind of think that that's maybe the commission having a bit of bias against the way the Russian plane was designed and the Russians themselves, the Soviets. Maybe I certainly they were aheaded in the right direction, but they were looking at that v O R A that a now, well, well what they're saying though, what the what the Margot Commission is saying is that they were on the wrong frequency.

So if you look at the map and the trajectory that they were on, they were actually heading in a pretty a pretty straight course to Matsafa. So it's it's understandable why they came to that conclusion. But if you were listening, you may have noticed that I said that one of their two receivers, this plane had two v O R receivers, and when the investigators looked at the second one, they found that it was set to the correct channel, which was Matt Puto's signal, but they wasn't

one of them, the backup. Yeah, they didn't use them

both all the time. And so it seems that what they had done is they had set the they picked up their their trajectory based off the v O R or their their course, they adjust did and from there they turned on probably the autopilot, which just had a course heading, you know, and the autopilot took care of the next however long it was, which would have meant that, you know, when they made that turn that put them on a heading of two degrees, if anybody had happened

to look at the backup, they might have realized that they were completely off course. And so that's where the Margot commission is saying, is that they failed their duties because they picked up the wrong signal and didn't look at the other one or check it again later on. Yeah. So they they've got the autopilot going for a long time and then when they come off that bearing and turn onto the v O R and they realized, oh, we must have been blown off by a cross and

blown way off course. And so understandably they made that course of joke and then they turned the autopilot back on that. Yeah, so it's I don't know, Yeah, I guess for me, I mean the fact that they reached out a pup of times to say like, hey, are your lights on? Though, like they had questions, right they there was something in them, Yeah, there was something that was in the in them that was saying like, okay, but we should be seeing lights, like these are the

things we should be seeing. Why are we not seeing those things? And to you know, as I understand it, they were getting feedback from the tower that was like all the lights are one they were. They were radio communication like what what do you mean you don't see the lights? Like, if you're where you're supposed to be, you should be seeing the lights. I think the tower

responded to the light question after the second request. They didn't do it right away, right, But I mean they're managing a ton of air traffic, right, you don't expect But I think, you know, for me, that's that's where the problem comes in. Is if they were being totally negligent, maybe they're being a little lazy. You're like, whatever, this is the right thing. But if you've made the run

a hundred times, you know what to look for. And if you're not seeing those things, and you're even like mentioning that you're not of alarm bells and you should be doing something. And then when alarm bells that hey you're at a weird altitude go off, maybe you should be listening to those things. And so, by the way, they didn't. They don't have Did they have air traffic control in Mozambique or did they have it in those days?

Were their radars operating? Oh? Did were they? Is anybody tracking their plan just as the South Africans, I don't know, To be honest, I've never that's a great question, and I've never actually seen anything that said anything about that. I will mention that there's a lot of controversy over the records of the Maputo air Traffic Control because things like their tapes of the conversation are gone. They were

quote unquote lost or disappeared, were just recorded over we used. Yeah, well, and you know, I don't I don't know if they were actually saving anything. I doubt that they had the capability at the time to digitally save anything. So it's not as if you know, today you all we see this thing where you can play back the radar to see what the heck was popping up. I don't think they they had I don't know that technology was available, but a sorry as audio tapes, so you know you

definitely save those. Well they tried, so they just appeared they went the way of the Dodo. Okay. So I don't know about this one. I'm I have mixed feelings on the crew error especially Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they realized that something was wrong. They may not have reacted in time. But yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I think that no matter how you cut it, even if even if there was some skullduggery on a part

of certain parties, the crew is still screwed up. They may yeah, they may have been a little uh lax in their reactions. If that if what you're going out

is there. Yeah, so let's talk about skull duggery. Let's talk about the false decoy or a false v o R decoy v o R because, like I said, the Soviets and their minority report, they said that they had to have been led astray and led into South Africa, and in their in the minority report, they get weirdly specific and say that obviously, and I'm using quotes here, obviously it was built using technology that was provided by the Israeli Intelligent Agents, which intelligence agency. Which that's just

that's an odd massade. Yeah, it's something about the massade. It's it's a weird thing to to slide in there. But yeah, okay, well yeah, I mean that this at this time, you know that the Soviets were still they were trying to stir the pot everywhere, included in in the Israelis at that time were allies of the South Africans and so they were they were always trying to stir up trouble in the Arab world too, so work in Israel, and I can see why they would do that.

That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. So from from that point on though, the claims of a decoy or mobile vel v o R began to come up and surface, and I did some digging into this with some online sources and then also by reaching out to some of our experts who I mentioned a little bit before. So I do want to reach it. I do want to say thank you to one Zach Kim

and Ronnie all of those experts. You guys saw the emails back and forth, and yeah, yeah, there was there was some high math in there that I had to work on for a few days, but it made sense and I couldn't have done it without these folks. Thank you. This is why we have experts. That's the thing that I've been noticing a little bit about our experts though,

as they assume we know too much. Like sometimes I'll respond with like a really interesting answer, but you're like, but I need to google like five of these, so I don't know what any of that means. Thank you, I think, but thank you to everybody because what that did is that help me understand better how a v o R worked, and even more so, how you could spoof one. So that was really important that you don't

find it a lot of the online stuff. Now. In two thousand three, there was a South African man named Hanslow who came forward. He was near the end of his jail sentence and he was in jail for crimes committed outside of the regime's instructions, which I have to take means he went a little trigger happy, probably, but he said that he was part of a South African team of special forces that were at the crash site. The night of the crash, he was on a backup team.

The primary team was running the decoy v O R. He was in a backup team that was there with RPGs with the express intent of if the plane doesn't crash on its own, it doesn't take the bait, shoot it down. I don't think an RPG is going to be really any good for taking a plane down. I mean maybe, like, yeah, listen, I played too many video

games and they all go boom everything. Yeah, I know in a video game, I can take an airplane down with a ten millimeter It's actually we're going to talk about the little things that you can bring a plane down with because it's actually kind of scary how easy it is. But no, you're a surface air missile. So they are there with armaments that would take it down if if it didn't fall for the trick. I guess, yeah, yeah,

I don't. I don't believe this guy's story, and I don't think I have to do too much to really trough that out because there's a lot of hearsay about what he has to say. And there are one or two people who came out and said, oh, yeah, I know, we we know the guy who made it. He's telling the truth. But you know, Hanslow also said that he was involved in another operation using the same type of device that brought down another plane. And oh he was

also involved in that was other plane. He was also involved in the monitoring of Namibian activists by the name of Anton Lubowski, who was later murdered and they don't know who killed him. I do have to point out those that, you know, the locals, the ones who said, well, they got chased away from the site. They also said, you know, there was a lot of military activity in this area the days before, but like it's a remote

area of South Africa. South Africa was pretty militized nation at that They also had a supposedly they had a base that was there for a couple of years, so they could have been on exercises or they could have been like trying to reinforce their border. Very possible. I mean, let's be honest. Michelle had just said I'm going to put missiles all along my border, and so they were probably like, oh, let's go check that out. And then there was suspicious activity in terms of there was a

really big tent erected on that site. Yeah yeah, yeah, that's like how the locals say, how big of a tent, like really really big, like as big as an airplane, as big as a bread box. Now just big, bigger than your average you know, troop tent, you know, a big tent, but we don't know what it is from that was it was it hiding like Thor's hammer or so We're going to move on while you try to find wall. Though, Let's let's circle back a little bit to the v o R and talk a little bit

more about that, like how it could have been spoof. Yeah, this this is where this is heading, because that for me is like way less complicated or out of unbelievable. Yeah, I'm willing to go there. So the thing do you need to know about the v o R is they

tend to be really big. They're big things. Like one of our experts was saying that to make one mobile or it was an expert I read somewhere, they said that it would have had to have been on the back of a three on truck, which is basically a semi and that's from its correct because they are also superpower hungry, so you got to bring a lit another truck or two with with the generator on it right, and if the farther you want to throw its signal, the higher up in the air, you need to run

the antenna. So you could you could conceivably need an antenna that's fifty hundred hundred and thirty feet tall. I mean, we're talking about a big antenna. These things though, they're big and bulky, so it's a little weird to think about that, you know, the way that somebody could carry

one of those around. But one of the things that are the expert Zach pointed out for me is that when you have two v rs broadcasting on the same frequency, unless one is massively stronger than the other, they might actually cancel each other out, which then defeats the purpose. It's also gonna like, you know, they're on the same frequency, you would think that they'd be going like, well, VR points this way and this way and yeah, or it

comes up and down back and forth. Yeah. I mean they put it a call to the airport to say what's going on with this exactly. But the workaround for that, rather than having this competing signal issue would simply be to have an inside man at the Mputu Airport. Who could during the time that you want, you knew that the President's plane was going to be coming by a certain area, flipped off the switch. So now you you

turn on the decoy. The decoy runs for a certain amount of time until you can confirm that the plane is turned and then you flip on the real one again and you turn off the decoy. That also would solve the problem that I had with the decoy, which is if the decoy was running, it should have caught more planes. It should have drawn more planes than just this one planes. The other thing about it is is, uh, this a little conspiracy requires an amazing amount of coordination.

Uh somebody was where did they leave from? It was yeah, so somebody. So they had to have somebody at Embald Airport to let them know when the plane took off and headed south. They would have known, They would have had a fair approximate idea what the airsped air speed of it would be no when it was approaching. It's objective complex, but they had to have They had to have a guy at that airport to provide them with

that information. They had to have a guy at the at Maputa Airport to flip off the switch, and then they had to have these guys running. I mean, this is this, this is a well greased operation. It's amazing. Kind of actually, Joe, can I can I kind of cut off part of that plan for you. They made contact with air traffic control and then they made their turn so that it could be as simple as they made They initiated the handshake of high we're here, and somebody says turn it on, turn it off, and they

flipped the switches right then plane turns. They know the crew is probably not going to continue to monitor the v o R, and they turn it back off once they've confirmed that they've made their turn, and that simplifies the number of people involved to start the beginning, I suppose. Yeah. But and then I guess they could turn it off and then they could like to start their truck up and get the hell out of there, because you've got a plan heading right for you. Yeah, that's exactly right.

You know what. The other way that this could very well have gone, though, again, this is a little more difficult when it comes to the decoy or the false v o R readings is if you remember I talked about that the signals. When they're pointing due north, they're both they're in phase, perfectly in phase, and the farther they are out tells you where you are in that three sixty degrees. It is entirely possible that instead of having a dummy v o R over the border, they

instead manipulated the v o R on site to twist it. Essentially, so rather than everything starting in phase at true north, it started in phase and let's say thirty seven degrees off of true norm. And is that something that's possible to be done? I don't know. I imagine that it is, though I've never heard of it being done, because it's it's a very simple system, but I don't know how easy it is to turn it and then turn it back.

And also there were there were other planes hidden into that hitting into that saying airport, which is why I say turning it and then turning it back, because they couldn't have left it in the odd position. I guess, like this might be a really dumb question, right, But like if we're talking like the flip of a light switch, right, you turn the one correct v o R off and

the wrong one on. Are we talking like you walk into that and then ignore everything else, or are we because to me, like we're saying, this is a constant ping that's happening back and forth between your aircraft and your station if you're monitoring it. Okay, So what we're saying is like they pinged onto a new one, they

made the turn, and then they turned the autopilot back on. Okay, that's what the Margot Commission alleges is that they took their they took their new berrying and where they turned the autopilot back on, which is then what led them to the mountains rod and where they crashed was that within two hundred miles away from Maputo is where they crashed realistically, but it was within the two mile okay,

so I guess within the bubble. And then then the other question would be right, is that like obviously they're not gonna let the autopilot land, so they're going to hit a point where they're going to think, okay, all right, we should be getting close. They turned that off and suddenly they've got two v O R pings coming at them. They've got the landing gear again if they're well, but you would right if you're coming in for landing you

don't think you would. You would, especially if somebody was like, no, our lights are all So they had they had when they hit the three thousand foot ceiling, they had switched over to oh what is there? It's visual flight proceeding. I can't. Basically, they were trying to do it by thing. You're doing it by you're doing it visually at that point, so you you turn on you don't you don't use the VR. I guess the one don't need you anymore.

I guess for me, one would think that a responsible pilot and navigator would think, okay, we'll give it like a minute, right, You're not going to be autopilot too visual. You're going to do autopilot t V O R for a minute to make sure everything's right, and then visual, which is what they did when they corrected. That's what they did. They turned the autopilot off and they said, m hmmm, the way the VR is not right. We're

going to correct the course. And then the controllers said, okay, when you're at three thousand feet, let us know, So they turned the autopilot back on until they were at what they thought with three thousand feet, they were at the front assistance in the right altitude, right, But so one would assume that they would do the same procedure where they would turn the autopilot off see the v O R. So be careful there, Devon, because you nor I are a pilot, and you cannot imply that that

is the way that the process works. I can't. I have tripped I have tripped us up before by making the very same assumption, and I don't know that that's the case. Yeah, what I don't really understand is like how they can fly all this distance and not at some point be saying, where the hell are the lights of Maputo? But again they thought that they they said apparent, they made statements saying basically they thought the power was out. Is that we're I mean, was Maputo suffering a lot

of brown outs at the time. I mean, I know in certain political strife that happened. It wasn't. It wasn't as if it had the strong youngest grid in the world. I would not be shocked that the place experienced power issues. You think the airport would have a backup generator. You would also think that when the airport said no, our lights are on, the pilots would be like, oh, well, we can't see them. So but I think that's the problem. Again.

That's where the Margot commission said, listen, when you've got that response, you should have started pulling up right instead of continuing to descend. And in fairness, they said that to dead men. So well no they I mean they talked for twenty two seconds. I mean there was the

the request Oh Margot, okay, got it. Yeah, you're right. Um, let's let's keep going on with this, this whole false beacon bit, because there are people who have said that it is possible that there wasn't a false beacon, but instead that the manipulated v O R was actually the v O R in at the airport in Matsafa, which was as we said, only a little bit off point seven.

But again, like we talked about before, that should have drawn more planes in to that airport, should have lured more in that direction that were headed to Maputo, always saying that they set one, that they changed the frequency

at the airport to the one that was in Maputo. Yes, oh no, no, no no. Matsafa people have said that the Matsafa, the the v O R at Matsafa had been altered to appear to be the Maputo v O. I think Joe and I were on the same page in interpreting that, and that like I thought that, you know, like a pilot knee adjusted so that they were on the wrong frequency all of a sudden, well within the correct But that's what that's what the Margot commission is basically said,

and they said that the crew screwed up and had it on the wrong signal, and but other people have said, no, no, that's probably just something that happened in the accident, and this was actually the dummy was actually at this other station,

the or other airport. And the thing that's really weird, and this is just one of those hanky things that you find in these stories, is that whoever it was that was running the the the air traffic control in Matsafa was also the same company or the same group that was running it in Maputo, and they were said to have links to the MOB. So people have said, well, obviously that's how they pulled it off because it was a mob deal. What are we talking about him, that's

a great question. The other thing is that there's also the problem that we know the conversation that took place between the pilots and the air traffic control because we have the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. We don't, of course have the tapes that took place at the end of the at the air traffic controller.

So it's entirely possible that they were not talking to Maputo Air Traffic Control, but in fact we're talking to somebody else masquerading as them, which is why the tapes were lost because they never actually existed. Kind of hard to like do that though, it's not easy, and I say it because it's out there. I don't believe it because that is again, that is one of those things, as you, Joe, are so fond of saying, that is too many links in the chain. That is just way

too complex. It is alright, conspiracy simple, yeah, yeah. So let's keep moving forward here. We're going to go to our next theory, which is basically it's the theory that there was a signal jammer or a frequency scrambler involved. I don't really I don't really get this one. But what happens is that this is that remember that news crew I said that South African news crew was on

the site. Somebody that was involved that was on the site and the search team walks up with a small device that has described as being the size of a pound of butter, which is a weird description of size, but okay, do you know what kind of looks like? But it's just it's it's a strange description to me, that's all. But they say that it could have been

a frequency scrambler. Uh, it was figured out that it was indeed not one who was this person anyway, I hold this for some random searcher on the site who was officially probably a military guy, a South African military guy. But that's all I can guess. Oh, he couldn't keep a secret very well. Then well he sent it straight to the news camera, which makes you wonder if that was intentional, because you know, we've talked about Stir in

the pod. You could i mean pick botha was out there, throw and everything he could at this story just to see what would stick. So he might have said, hey, I've said too many teams, I've already talked to them twice. Why don't you go show this thing and say it's this? Yeah, I mean, I'm making that up. But the point is is that it obviously wasn't that. But the scrambler would a scrambler would have been effective in disrupting their distance

measuring equipment and probably their communications. The issue is is that we know that their communications were working because again we have the cockpit voice reporter. Um, you would think that it would have interfered with the v O R to the point that the v R signal would have been bad, or it would have it wouldn't have worked. Right, How this thing, how this thing would have worked, doesn't make any sense that it's actually kind of a toothless claim to me. So I don't I don't put any

stock into the it was a frequent jam. Yeah, yeah, No, I don't see how it could have worked either, because if we don't know if this guy was saying that it was found in the rede so somebody put a frequency grambler on the plane. Theoretically, yes, the navigational equipment. In fact, it was just a regular piece of equipment

from the plane. So we're gonna move on to our final theory, which is that the plane was shot down to one of the survivors actually said several times that he remembered feeling an impact or an explosion just before

the plane went down. Personally before the plane hit the ground, because it doesn't I'm sorry, just to discount this, didn't we say that the plane hit a hill and then bounced off and then bounced off, and I and then feel that is probably what he is interpreting as a explosion, because it would be very loud, to be very rough, it would throw you about. I can see how you would interpret that as an explosion. But doing our due diligence, when hadn't I ran down this path a little bit.

The wreckage was spread over eight hundred fifty meters, which is about half a mile, so there's wreckage everywhere. None of the wreckage showed any signs of having been hit by any kind of explosive device, so like a surface to air missile like we were talking about, because you would expect to see heat and burn marks and things like that on the metal, and none of that was detected.

We're gonna find residue from explosives also. But there's also a bunch of stuff that I read out there on the internet talking about the fact that there have been planes that were brought down by things that were the size of a beer can. There was a small explosive that if put next to the skin of the plane and detonated while they're at altitude like thirty five thousand feet up in the air, the pressure is enough to start tearing the fuselage apart and can cause a plane crash.

But that also begs the question of if that's what happened, why the hell did they do it at two or three thousand feet off the ground when the plane was landing rather than when it was in the middle of nowhere and at its max altitude. Well, that's that's the thing. It's like, you know, what's one of the odds. Let's let's say they lured it in, it's about to crash anyway, Why bother shooting it down? Why why do I save yourself an expensive missile? Yeah, so there's there's a lot

of problems with that. Yeah, I mean, I guess my question so were we heard the pilot and you know, everyone in the cockpit swearing a lot. So I guess there could be some sort of like hey, somebody sent like a firework or mortar up to explode, and they were like crop crop, crop crop or whatever, right, and you know, corrected, and that's when they really crash. That would make more sense to me, It would explain why one of the survivor would say an explosion happened because

something they saw kind of exploded. It helped to, I don't know, disorient the people who were trying to steer the plane and help bring it down even more. I don't know. I mean, like that's something that I could see, but I definitely don't see some sort of missile. What you described is something such an extra step that it doesn't make any sense if the plane is already descending

unless it was. Are you saying that's a diversionary tax sort of like you know, so like their alarms are going off and they're like, you're close to the ground, and then a mortar goes off and they're like, oh crap or something worse that there would have been word about an explosion. I don't know. If all they're doing is like swearing, well they weren't just swearing. They were swearing because of the ground proximity warning going off. They're talking to each other, they're trying to talk to air

traffic control. So at that point I would expect that if they would saying, think the flayer goes off next to the plane or an explosion they would say, or an explosion, you know they would say, what the hell is that? Yeah? Yeah, they yes, that that is something to lead us to believe that something else happened outside

of the aircraft itself. Well, it could have been that, you know, right before they graze, that hilts up maybe one of their one of their wheels at the top of a tree, you know, and made a big thump. I mean, because it is the belly of the plane in the trees that hits first. And then like I said, it bounced, ye, bounced up and then came right back down. Yeah, I mean overall, I just I don't know what to think about this. It's so I'm pretty sure I think

the Market Commission got a right. I think they just set their v o R incorrectly and drawn off course by that. I think maybe they just got so comfortable, right this is we said that this is a flight path that they've taken over and over and over again.

Maybe they were just so comfortable with it that they were just I was in this plane something like that, this crew specifically, if I remember correctly, So yeah, maybe they were just so used to their route they were just relying on their instruments because they were literally phoning it in. You know, I don't know if they like like when I went, for example, to set there b o R. I don't know if they did it straight

from memory. If they had they had a booklet, like a pamphlet that had all the all the frequencies for all the airports in the region, I guess I would assume if it was the capital of the country of for which she were, I mean, the president, this is

their a force one, right, so you know that my heart. Yeah, And I don't think that they could just get it confused with another local airport, because they would have been making that, you know, going in all the time, saying make sure to be on point seven and not point three because we don't want to go to Matsofa. We want to go to But I guess in fairness that we don't have any way of knowing if that display

was working correctly, that's possible. Part of did you read their report, by the way, either of you get a

chance to go. I didn't read the entire thing. I went to the conclusions and yeah, okay, because I went through parts of it, and they do the Margot Commission did sort of lay into the design of the display, not just for the fact that you know, it was the way the three and the seven were displayed, but also talking about the fact that there was very little backlighting and it was it was hard to see, so that could it could have been, unfortunately an honest mistake.

And I I and I don't. I gotta tell you, I didn't bother. I probably should have looked, but I don't know what the number three and the number seven looked like in cyrillic, So it looked like cyrillic are in Russian. I looked for it, and everything that I found they looked like a normal three in a seven. But I've also in the commission's report, they talked about the fact that there's a line above both the three and the seven. Well, it's true, right, it's three goes

like this and the seven goes like right. And you're you're describing the horizontal bar at the top of bull. But you've had a digital clock before, right, Yes, so you've got the bar that's horizontal, and then the vertical stripe right for THEE, and then you've got you know, for three, you've got two additional horizontal bars. But but if it's not back lit. I can see why it's an issue. It's it's very difficult. What kind of display was it was? It was it l eds or digital

clocks that had the flip cards. No, I don't believe it was that in any way, shape or form. I think that it was a kind of a display, a dial situation that then the lights of the cockpit somehow illuminated. But that's a total guess on my part because again I haven't been able to find a good picture of it. And I found a bunch of flight simulator images, but those are not reliable, they're not so I I don't

know for sure. Yeah, for all I know it's an analog you know, dial and yeah, yeah, I don't think it's actually but I think, yeah, I just don't know what I think about that. I think somebody probably put the wrong frequency in the in the v O R

that's mine. I think that's the most likely because you know, I mean, the South Africans didn't really they hadn't incentive, but you know then they cost a big, a big nasty bruising mess on their own territory, you know, so if if they had done that, yeah, there's no evidence because I mean people would have witnessed things other than like not large tents. They would have seen a couple

of large trucks. And that's exactly right, is that if there had plus you know, what the thing is is pretty it's a pretty specialized piece of equipment to build and move into place and then disassemble and theoretically then never use again. Or if Hans Low is telling the truth, used one other time and then let's just scrap it melted down so nobody notices. Now they would have operated with impunity with that thing. Let's just take down all

of our enemies. Yeah, let's drop dropping planes left. Yeah. I guess part of me was thinking envisioning some sort of smaller device that has smaller range that could be on the back of a truck. But then I was realizing that, like, oh, yeah, planes are going like a couple hundred miles an hour, so actually have a truck

that's keeping up with that. You you are not possibly too far off track on that, because if you look at about where they took their thirty seven degree turn, if you were to go directly west from there, it's only about fifteen miles to the South African border. At that point because you know, of course borders aren't square or straight or anything like that, and so it is possible that they could have set up a much smaller

decoy that had a much smaller range. Other instead of saying that the decoy had to have been in in the mountains where the plane crashed, so that that is technically possible that they could have been that close and spoofed it, and that's why it didn't draw in more planes. But there's also again, this is that anecdotal stuff. I don't know that this is true, and we should probably

move forward here quite quickly. But other pilots have said, oh yeah, I noticed that my Puoto's v O R came on ware earlier than normal that day, which is really weird. And yet they all seemed to have tracked into the actual Puto airport. There are there are days so it went for various reasons. Radio conditions change. Yeah, we talked about skipping things like yeah, yeah, But that's

the other reason. I don't think that there was any South African intervention here, because you know, they should have been already within easier because they were like sixty miles away from a Puto roughly where they made their their turn right so, and and they said that there was another plane that came right before after them that was picked up. Their vo are like a hudernating nautical miles out right, Yeah, if they've gotten within sixty miles and

then they suddenly set up autopilot. Off, let's turn onto v O R. See what it says. Oh, it says it's over here. I think they I think they set their v O R the wrong frequency. You you might be right, you and the market commission might be right again. We said this a couple of times. I'm I'm completely unsure at this point. Yeah, that's because otherwise they would have picked up the R. All right, Well, I guess that means that we should get into, as Devin calls it,

business end in business housekeeping. House cleaning is a much different process which maybe would happen to Samara Michelle. Uh So, we're gonna go ahead and give you some details here, the first of which is our website. You can find this episode at all episodes, as well as some of the links for this particular story from the research that we did on our website. That website is Thinking Sideways

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