Special Hearings — Helderberg Flight Special Hearing — 1998-06-01

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Those were the rumours.    And the rumours were that he had been coerced into flying this fatal flight.
 We know that a close relationship existed between South African Airways and Armscor, in that they were both parastatals, they were both deeply involved in fighting the holy war against the ungodly, by virtue of the type of personnel which were involved.   
 We know that South African Airways was involved in sanctions busting, and that they did not stoop to involve themselves, or rather they did not hesitate to involve themselves in assisting Armscor wherever and whenever was possible.   
 We know of a number of incidents, and before I tell you of these incidents, let me tell you that my research into this over the last five or six years has come across a common factor:  everybody involved centrally, peripherally or even on the extreme margins, has been frightened to death.   There is no doubt in my mind that acts of intimidation have been applied to these people to inhibit them from coming forward, and if SAA should ever make a submission to you that it is unlikely that an organisation as large as SAA could be so watertight for so long, I want to remind you, Mr Commissioner, that we had a bunch of institutionalised, organised, efficient and ruthless scoundrels called the South African Police Force, who raped, robbed and murdered their way around this country for 25 years without anybody breaking ranks, so I don't accept that the enormity of the crimes that I'm talking about would necessarily have reached the surface, but every single person to whom I've spoken has been a terrified individual.
 Now the incidents to which I'm referring to, are several, but write down the name of Captain Flippie Looch, L O O C H.   The conversation I had with him is not without its moment of wry drama and amusement, because I asked him to comment on the following:  it was alleged that Captain Flippie Looch had parked his 747 on the apron at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, and that labourers loading cargo had dropped an item of cargo and out rolled rockets.   Now rockets normally shouldn't be carried on board civilian aircraft, and I asked Captain Looch to comment, having first spoken to John Hare, the deputy chief executive officer of South African Airways, and Hare was kind of non-committal and Looch was adamant in his refusal to talk to me, until I said to him, "Mr Looch, but I've spoken to SAA and they said that these were in fact not rockets, but they were drop tanks for mirages and that you didn't know the difference", and his childish ego was stung into reply, "But of course I knew the difference, I called my co-pilot and I said, `Look at these'", I said, "Thank you Captain Looch", and I wrote it in my report.   That happened to Deon Storm, a pilot in the same position and at the same airport.   If they were Mirage drop tanks, the pilots would have known, if they were not contraband and dangerous, SAA would have said, "But they were empty rocket shells, what is the harm of carrying them?"   They never did.
 We also know, and I name another name you should bear in mind, is the name of Bingo Kruger.   Bingo Kruger has a shady past.   He worked inter alia for Armscor in the development of South Africa's much vaunted nuclear project.  Bingo Kruger has confirmed to me that SAA would not hesitate to transport goods if they deemed it in the national interest, despite the fact that it would not comply with IATA regulations.
 Now, let's get back to the Margo report.    My involvement in the Margo report started shortly after the loss of the aircraft, in that I was appointed by the attorneys acting for the Boeing Aircraft Company to investigate an aspect which I didn't fully understand the reasons for at the time.   That aspect was the levels of carbon monoxide in the recovered bodies.    And having done the work, I then started to follow the inquiry a little more closely, and the one thing that was certain is that there were three or four parties who participated in that inquiry, each of whom had their own agenda.   
 There was Boeing.   Boeing's agenda was simply this, they were there to forestall and ward off any criticism of their aircraft.   They weren't interested in anything else, all they wanted was to make certain that no criticism of the 747 came unchallenged in the way of Boeing.
 There was the Airline Pilots Association who were represented there.   They had one aim in mind, and that was to forestall any criticism of their members, and I'm going to come back to that, because it's important.
 There was SAA, who was there to forestall any possible criticism of SAA, and nobody in particular was actually trying to find out what happened.   
 If you read the full transcript of the Margo report, you will see that a vast amount of time and trouble was spent on utterly irrelevant things.   It was irrelevant to that inquiry as to whether the aircraft broke up in mid-air or on impact.   The fact is that the loss of that aircraft was causally and directly linked to a fire on board, and that fire, we know, worldwide experience has shown that that is invariably, a fire on board an aircraft like that, in the position in which it occurred, relates to some material which should not have been aboard that aircraft, because the things which you are normally allowed to carry on an aircraft don't catch fire, and I'll get back to the cargo manifest and discuss that a little later, but the real issue is that an inordinate amount of time was spent debating whether the engines were turning.   Experts from the Pratt and Whitney(?) plant were called and cross-examined and testified as to whether those fans were under power when they hit the water.   With respect, Mr Commissioner, it's irrelevant.    What is relevant is what was aboard that aircraft and how did it come to be there, to catch fire?
 Now let's look at that point.   Fire investigators in the world today are, if they came under the attention of the Wild Life Association, we would be considered as a group to be a threatened species, because there are very few.    You can number the number of fire investigators in Great Britain on the fingers of a mutilated hand.   I'm talking about the good ones.   In the world today there exist very few firms of reputable fire investigators, but pre-eminent amongst those is a firm called Dr J H Burgoyne and Partners.   
 Now Dr Burgoyne was an academic in the United Kingdom about 35 years ago and he realised that there was a need for fire investigation and he formed a firm of fire investigators, which persists to this day, who, in my opinion, are the best in the world.   They are conservative, they are competent, they are intelligent and they're informed, and they're extremely good.
 The man in that firm who specialised in aircraft accidents and aircraft fires was a man by the name of Mr Southeard, S O U T H E A R D.    Mr Southeard was called to testify.   He was properly sworn in before Margo and he was properly cross-examined and his evidence stood the test of that, it was not dented or diminished in any way, and he came to the conclusion that the fire aboard the Helderberg was not an ordinary diffusion flame fire.   
 Now I'm sure that the commission, or I would think that the commission is not quite up to speed on the difference between an accelerated fire and a diffusion flame fire, and if you indicate to me, I would explain the difference to you.

CHAIRPERSON: Please do.

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Does anybody have a cigarette lighter here?

CHAIRPERSON: Christelle would obviously have.