A file at the National Archives goes over the increasing threat to airlines from violence in the 1960s, and what the authorities did about it.
A paper to the international civil aviation body the ICAO assembly in Montreal in June 1970 about violence against aircraft gave the example of a Comet jet over the Mediterranean in October 1967 that had a bomb explode in a tourist passenger cabin. Civil aviation needed to detect explosives and weapons (before they were smuggled onto aircraft). That required a right to search passengers, freight and baggage; and to take security measures at airports; and countries had to coordinate. The bombers may conspire in one country; place a bomb in an aircraft registered in another country, while it was at an airport in yet another country; and it would explode above another country.
Britain reviewed 1450 cases of illegal explosives between 1964 and 1967 and most were of nitroglycerine; although some were of ‘plastic’ explosive. How then to detect them? Among 11 possibilities listed were ultraviolet; infra-red radiography, and mass spectography. The British paper suggested a ‘sniffer’ technique based on gas chromatography. It would be portable; and have a response time of a few minutes to inspect luggage or a cabin. A drawback was that it could not detect anything in a plastic box; research was continuing. A more promising development was training dogs. For searching for weapons, x-ray, eddy currents or magnetic methods were given as the ‘most promising lines’. There was the problem of ‘false alarms’, for example from wired bras and steel-boned corsets, besides portable irons in a passenger’s baggage. And before using x-rays you would have to prove no harm was done to passengers, or their baggage.
Another British paper of 1970 began with 22 ‘detonations’ within aircraft since 1949; including five in the United States, two in Canada and two in Mexico. Some were undoubtedly planted by maintenance workers. The paper admitted it was ‘impossible to prevent a really determined saboteur from carrying out his intention without a painstaking search by experts of the aircraft and all items joining it and without guards being deployed to prevent an attack against the outside of the aircraft. That was impractical for an airline: “There is therefore an urgent necessity for precautionary measures and for the adoption of methods of scientific detection for explosives in aircraft, particularly in all passenger baggage, hand baggage, cargo, mail and supplies, before it is loaded into an aircraft.”
Explosions in aircraft were not necessarily by terrorists; a 1964 case in Bolivia was probably by dynamite, planted by a ‘heavily insured passenger’.
A meeting at Shell Mex House in April 1970 was between the Board of Trade, and Ministry of Defence officials (and members of MI5, though they were not identified as such), and airlines; about threats to aircraft flying to Israel, or any aircraft flying Israelis. An MoD man listed three main methods of aircraft sabotage: placing devices in aircraft, or tampering; airline employees such as engineers, maintenance, loaders and cleaning staff, to place a device or timer; or, they could contaminate the fuel or food. The most efficient device was the ‘altimeter bomb’, which presumably would explode when the aeroplane reached a set height.
The meeting heard about counter-measures. Search of aircraft; positioning of guards near the aircraft; a mobile barrier, at least 50 yards from the aircraft and if possible the illumination of the approaches to the aircraft, but not the aircraft or the guards. If possible, the aircraft should be quarantined at an isolated stand, under the supervision of staff. Airlines using Luton were critical of the apparent lack of security, ‘particularly their reluctance to search baggage in buildings’.
One airline asked for advice to pilots about the risks when hijacked in flight; should they risk a bullet in the fabric of the aircraft if they refused to deviate from the normal route. The Board of Trade would send to airlines a letter, ‘setting out the reality of risks and dangers to aircraft operating into Middle East airports including Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran.’
A Board of Trade paper of May 1970 set out how the British Airports Authority (BAA) had a police force at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Prestwick (the four airports state-owned that the BAA looked after). The Board of Trade administered some airports, and appointed police. Local airports relied for their internal security on local police forces. Because hijacks or bombs were likely on aircraft going to risky areas (rather than other destinations, that is); probably a major, international airport, in the UK most probably Heathrow.
Heathrow (pictured) had had security for some time, ‘and in the light of recent events …. strengthened such measures including the establishment of vehicle access control into vulnerable areas through control points, constantly manned and control of personnel access to those areas. Control of access is maintained by the scrutiny of vehicle passes and personal identity cards with photographs issued by employers.’ Measures that the Board did not specify were ‘to ensure that those passes do not fall into the wrong hands.’ For example, as for temporary staff engaged on a seasonal basis, ‘the personal card is endorsed with the date of expiry’. Contractors had to carry cards. IDs were numbered and a worker had to report any lost card on a ‘stop list’.
Police took part in screening of all outgoing passengers from Heathrow, ‘and an x-ray machine is available for use in the search of baggage’. As for sight-seers (quite common when air flight was more of a novelty), they could watch from ‘special public enclosure areas that are sited to give the least risk to aircraft parking stands’. The BAA, ‘at some financial cost’, had closed a public viewing area in a terminal.
As for heads of state ‘who for political reasons may constitute a security risk’, the airline BOAC had static guards on aircraft on the ground, in the ramp area at Heathrow; and it had been researching metal detection.
An MI5 man wrote to the Board of Trade in April 1970, to comment on what the Board was proposing to say to the ICAO at its gathering. MI5 reported two cases of tampering with RAF aircraft: a Victor bomber engine had cables severed in 1962; and a Canberra tailplane wire was severed in 1968. The Board had evidently asked MI5 for ‘some suggestions for protective measures which can be incorporated in the design and construction of aircraft and airports’. If security is taken into the design stage of a new airport, it will make the protection of both the airport itself and the aircraft which use it much simpler’. Here was the principle of ‘designing out crime’. The MI5 letter ended by promising other contributions to the ICAO meeting; a further example of the part MI5 played as a security adviser to government.
MI5 reported some dozen sabotage incidents, dating back to and as far away as a Catalina flying boat that exploded on August 27, 1949 and sank on moorings in Sydney. There were no casualties; as in most cases listed. For example in June 1963 a Portuguese Airlines Caravalle plane had a home-made bomb explode in the passenger baggage, before it was loaded into the aircraft at Heathrow. Most recent was an Arab Airlines Antonov at Alexandria in Egypt; an explosion injured one. Rhodesia had cases in December 1962 or sand and stones in aircraft engines. This did show that MI5 among its other work kept detailed archives of modern world events.
Ahead of the ICAO meeting, the Foreign Office reported, about the international cooperation. The Spanish Foreign ministry was in the throes of ‘massive reorganisation’ and was ‘highly unlikely’ that a minister would attend the ICAO (although MI5’s list of sabotage included two explosions against Iberia Airlines in June 1963). The FO reported from Vienna that the Austrians were likely to send an official, not a minister, because of a ‘caretaker regime’. Meanwhile, Israel promised a ‘strong delegation’, but doubted what a meeting would achieve, especially if Arabs were taking part.
In 1968, a Board of Trade accident investigation branch report on explosive sabotage had summed up with the same ‘urgent necessity’ lines as in the 1970 paper. The report included photos of past aircraft that survived explosions and an innocent-looking large commercial catalogue that hollwoed out could hold a watch or barometer (for the altimeter bomb) for timing a battery; detonator and plastic explosive; ‘enough …. to blow an aircraft to pieces’. Or, the ingredients of a bomb could be inside a travel bag; a toilet was a favourite place.
March 1970, Air Vice Marshal JB (John) Russell, the UK representative to ICAO reported from Montreal ‘a rather long discussion on the side’, about where to hold an extraordinary session about security. Some wanted it in Switzerland, some Montreal. The eventual vote was for Montreal although some would have preferred Switzerland, ‘simply because it was less expensive and more convenient’. An IATA executive committee was chaired by the BOAC MD Keith Granville; met in Geneva in March 1970. Airlines wanted governments to act against the threat to safety, and asked for international and national laws and cooperation on international airport security standards and national security coordinators; including the police and postal authorities. Airlines acknowledged that airports had to screen passenger baggage and cargo. Airlines had to exchange security information; and have standard policies for security measures for a normal, and emergency, situation.
A Foreign Office telegram dated March 1970 and signed by the Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart noted that ‘the success of such a [ICAO] conference would depend largely on its being insulated as far as possible from the political issues of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Anything that can be constructed as a ‘political’ approach should therefore be avoided. And Arab countries essentially. …. We continued to believe that the most effective way of bringing pressure to bear on them [Arab governments] was either by means of international bodies such as ICAO and the International Pilots Association or at working level via the major airlines.’ It was no use pointing fingers at governments; although that the FO was taking a non-political approach was, itself, a political decision. If anyone singled out the Swissair disaster, the Arabs would be in the dock. (As background, in February 1970 a Swissair passenger jet out of Zurich had exploded and crashed over Switzerland, killing all on board. Palestinians were suspected.)
Geneva would be ‘uncomfortable’ for Arab governments for a meeting. The telegram passed on an Algerian view that the February 1970 explosions were sabotage was not proven and sabotage was being used to stir up opinion against the Palestinians. Crimes against aircraft, then, were politically loaded. The FO reckoned that the Algerians were ‘unlikely to support effective anti-sabotage measures or to apply them if decided by a majority’.
