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

CHAIRPERSON: That is now in Jo'burg Airport?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: At Jo'burg Airport.   The missing ZUR tape was never adequately dealt with by Margo, in fact he went to great effort to make certain that that ZUR tape was never properly investigated.   Had that ZUR tape genuinely had nothing on it, there would have been no finer way of defusing the rumours and speculations than to say to everybody, "There's the tape, listen to it and apologise".  They never did that.   The tape was taken out that night, it didn't inexplicably go missing.   There's no doubt that Jimmy Deale took that tape out and gave it to Mickey Mitchell.   All of those men sat in the inquiry and heard the deliberations about what had happened to the tape.   It was a matter of one sentence for Jimmy Deale to stand up before the commission and say, "M'Lord, I took out that tape, I gave it to Mickey Mitchell, Mickey Mitchell did something with it", and then to ask Mickey Mitchell, the tracing of the steps of that tape would have been legally simplistic.   It was never done.   And everything to date points to an involvement of some type of military ordnance aboard that aircraft and to a massive cover-up to conceal that from the relatives, the insurers and the public of South Africa.
 Thank you for having listened to my presentation.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Dr Klatzow.   Do you have any questions to put?

MS TERREBLANCHE: Does the panel have any questions at this stage?

CHAIRPERSON: Ms Terreblanche, if you have questions to put, you can put them.

MS TERREBLANCHE: You have been also asked to look into the level of, if I have it right, mono... (intervention).

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Carbon monoxide.

MS TERREBLANCHE: ...carbon monoxide.

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Ja.

MS TERREBLANCHE: Now, do you think that the tests done on the bodies that were found after the crash were sufficient and what is your interpretation of the tests?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Well firstly the tests have very little relevance into the cause of the crash.   If the, the cause of the crash is the fire, whether the fire killed them by burning through the control cables, damaging the aircraft so it fell apart, or poisoning the crew, is a minor detail.   It is a detail which might be useful in redesigning the aircraft at a future stage, but it is not germane to the point of what was aboard the aircraft at the time and how did it get there.    That's the first thing.
 The second thing is that Harold Schroeder, who did the  original test, did so on a mixture of blood, seawater and body fluid.   The literature is eloquent in saying that this is the inappropriate fluids to use for the determination of carboxi-haemoglobin, which is the compound formed when carbon monoxide combines with haemoglobin, and Margo accepted Schroeder's work, although the literature is clear in condemning the type of fluid that he did it on.
 So I would say that Schroeder's work was inaccurate, or potentially inaccurate, and that it was probably not the carbon monoxide, because we have a perfectly coherent Captain Uys discussing things with Plaisance moments before he goes into the water.   Now I don't think it was carbon monoxide that killed Uys or his crew.   It may very well have killed the passengers, because you must remember, and I hate to disabuse you of the reassurance that the airlines wish you to fly with, when they drop the little bag down, all it does is recirculates, with a little bit of oxygen added, the cabin atmosphere.   So if there are poisonous gases in the cabin, you'll die with an enriched oxygen content.   It's worse than useless.   It is only useful if there is an inadvertent decompression of the cabin without toxic gases.

MS TERREBLANCHE: Just to end that, but is there any indication of what the bodies that were found died of?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Well, that plane probably went into the ocean at 400 knots.    There is no way that anybody could survive impact of that nature.   The bodies were mutilated to an extraordinary extent, consistent with a high velocity impact with the ocean.   So, from that point of view, I don't think there's anything sinister about that, although there's been a lot of conjecture, but there's more than enough things to have killed them without looking for anything arcane.

MS TERREBLANCHE: Are you familiar with the CSIR tests done for the investigation at the time?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Just remind which the tests were?   There were tests done by Martin Venter, the Bureau of Standards.   Are those the ones you're referring to?   Ja.   Martin Venter put up a suggestion that there might have been fireworks aboard, only to have his own skittles knocked down, there was never any substantial evidence that was in any way substantiable that Martin Venter's investigations could sustain.
 Many things were looked at, the presence of lithium batteries, which can under some circumstances cause ignition, but none of them deal with the essential finding of Greg Southeard's report that it was an accelerated fire, it was not packaging material which caused that damage.

MS TERREBLANCHE: There were also at the time limited tests done on little pieces of metal, or traces of metal found embedded in the upholstery?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: I haven't taken that any further.   At the time we looked at it and I could see nothing substantial which I could use to interpret the accident one way or the other.   It may well be that that needs to be relooked at.

MS TERREBLANCHE: I think you're familiar with the submission we got from a journalist, who wished to remain anonymous on the record, who have done an eight month investigation and feel that there is a good chance that the plane might have been shot down?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Yes, I'm aware that there are at least two sets of journalists who believe that the plane might have ended up outside Mauritius as a result of military activity other than the military placing something on board, in other words that a fighter pilot shot that aircraft down to prevent it from being landed.   I have never supported that notion, I don't believe there's anything to support it.   I find that there is more logical basis to a second fire having destroyed the aircraft, but clearly something untoward happened outside Mauritius, which was unrelated to the event which happened outside Taipei.   If somebody could find somebody to substantiate that, I have no difficulty in believing in the consummate evil of the last regime in having ordered that to be done, but there is no evidence that it was done.    It is certainly within the capability and the range of the available forces at the time to have done it, but there isn't a shred of evidence to support that at this point.

MS TERREBLANCHE: You referred to APC being needed for rocket fuel.   In a reply from Armscor it is said that Sonchem outside Somerset West have been manufacturing APC since 1980.   Are you then referring to the subtle ingredient when you talk about that?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: Yes.   Ammonium perchloride is not difficult chemically to manufacture, the difficulty lies in stopping it from spontaneously igniting, so immense precautions have to be taking place, and almost certainly the rocket fuels in the modern sophisticated armamentarium that we have is not pure ammonium perchlorate, it is ammonium perchlorate with additives to give it specific properties and behaviours, either rapid ignition or retarded ignition or whatever.   Now it is those subtle components which Armscor needed to find out more about, and which I believe they were planning to copy after chemical analysis.

MS TERREBLANCHE: And you spoke to Mr Jimmy Deale you said about four years ago?

DAVID JOSEPH KLATZOW: I spoke to Jimmy Deale four years ago.

MS TERREBLANCHE: I believe that he was unfortunately, he died very soon afterwards?