Air Rhodesia Flight 827, the Umniati

Munyati

Munyati is a small town in Midlands province in Zimbabwe. It is located about 29km north of Kwekwe on the main Harare-Bulawayo road which was about 5km away from the village center. In 1938 a coal-fired power station was built in the area and the village was established to house the personnel...

, was a scheduled flight RH827 between Kariba

Kariba

Kariba is a town in Mashonaland West province, Zimbabwe, located close to the Kariba Dam at the northwestern end of Lake Kariba, near the Zambian border. According to the 1992 Population Census, the town had a population of 20,736....

 and Salisbury

Harare

Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...

 that was shot down on 12 February 1979 by ZIPRA

ZIPRA

Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, a political party in Rhodesia. It participated in the Second Chimurenga against white minority rule in the former Rhodesia....

 terrorists using a Strela 2

Strela 2

The 9K32 “Strela-2” is a man-portable, shoulder-fired, low-altitude surface-to-air missile system with a high explosive warhead and passive infrared homing guidance...

 missile soon after take-off. The circumstances were very similar to that of Air Rhodesia Flight 825 five months earlier.

Incident description

The flight's departure from Kariba had been delayed, so it had not climbed over the lake to get above the ceiling of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles before heading for Salisbury. The aircraft was damaged by a Strela 2 missile and came down in rough terrain in the Vuti African Purchase Area east of Lake Kariba

Lake Kariba

Lake Kariba is the world's largest artificial lake and reservoir. It lies 1300 kilometers upstream from the Indian Ocean, along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe...

. None of the 59 passengers or crew survived.

Countermeasures

Following the second incident, Air Rhodesia modified the exhaust pipes of the Viscount aircraft to reduce their heat signature, and painted the aircraft with a low-radiation paint.