On this day: 1962 - In Flight Bombing

On this day in 1962, Continental Flight 11, a Boeing 707 traveling from Chicago to Kansas City with 37 passengers and eight crew, crashed near Unionville, MO. While in flight an explosive decompression occurred secondary to the detonation of a dynamite based IED in a rear lavatory. Shortly after the explosion the tail section separated causing the aircraft to descend uncontrollably. All 45 souls were killed. The FBI determined that the bomb was placed by an individual hoping to provide a newly upgraded life insurance pay-out to his family. The mid air explosion was witnessed by people on the ground as well as the commander of a US Air Force B-47 Stratojet Bomber traveling out of Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka, Kansas. The subplot for the 1968 novel "Airport", which was produced as a movie by the same name in 1970, was somewhat based on this incident. 

Source http://goo.gl/Uz4si

Sources
http://goo.gl/SjJTM
http://goo.gl/Lfnki

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Steven Kuhr

Emergency Management Nexus
Disaster History

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On this day: 1970 - RAF Terrorist Group Formed

On this day in 1970, the Red Army Faction, commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang or Baader-Meinhof Faction (RAF), was formed by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof. The group was a communist left-wing militant organization whose goals were the opposition of fascist regimes, the end of the Vietnam War, and for West Germany to acknowledge earlier German Nazism. Using bombs as its main weapon, the RAF is said to be responsible for 34 deaths and numerous casualties during nearly 30 years of operation. 

The RAF, like the Weather Underground (AKA Weathermen) in the United States, are representative of left wing politically based terrorist organizations of the cold-war era which espoused Marxist-Leninist philosophies. Groups such as the RAF were structured and hierarchical in character as opposed to today's decentralized global ensemble of actors and franchise groups centered around al-Qaeda philosophy.  

                                    Aftermath of the 1981 RAF bombing of U.S. Air Forces Europe headquarters at 
                                                 Ramstein Air Base, Germany - Source: http://goo.gl/BXuRC

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Steven Kuhr

Emergency Management Nexus
Disaster History

skuhr.blogspot.com
disasterhx.blogspot.com
facebook.com/emnexus
twitter.com/steven_kuhr
#EMNexus
#DisasterHX