Plane Went Down in Gander Town

By Raymond C. Wilson

Nearly 38 years after 256 people died in the crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, we still don't have a definitive answer as to why the 'plane went down in Gander town'. Five members of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB) believe ice on the wings caused the plane to stall shortly after take-off from Gander International Airport. In a dissenting opinion, four CASB members believe that an in-flight fire resulting from detonations of undetermined origin brought about catastrophic system failures. U.S. intelligence officials were quick to dismiss the fact that a terrorist group claimed responsibility for the crash. The victims included 248 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) who were returning from a 6-month peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. This is the story of the deadliest military plane crash in U.S. history. The book was written by the former U.S. Army officer who served as the HQDA Liaison Officer for the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) during their 6-month deployment to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond C. Wilson
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215510445

Raymond C. Wilson

Raymond C. Wilson is a military historian, filmmaker, and amateur genealogist. During his military career as an enlisted soldier, warrant officer, and commissioned officer in the U.S. Army for twenty-one years, Wilson served in a number of interesting assignments both stateside and overseas. He had the honor of serving as Administrative Assistant to Brigadier General George S. Patton (son of famed WWII general) at the Armor School; Administrative Assistant to General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley at the Pentagon; and Military Assistant to the Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon. In 1984, Wilson was nominated by the U.S. Army Adjutant General Branch to serve as a White House Fellow in Washington, D.C. While on active duty, Wilson authored numerous Army regulations as well as articles for professional journals including 1775 (Adjutant General Corps Regimental Association magazine), Program Manager (Journal of the Defense Systems Management College), and Army Trainer magazine. He also wrote, directed, and produced three training films for Army-wide distribution. He is an associate member of the Military Writers Society of America. Following his retirement from the U.S. Army in 1992, Wilson made a career change to the education field. He served as Vice President of Admissions and Development at Florida Air Academy; Vice President of Admissions and Community Relations at Oak Ridge Military Academy; Adjunct Professor of Corresponding Studies at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College; and Senior Academic Advisor at Eastern Florida State College. While working at Florida Air Academy, Wilson wrote articles for several popular publications including the Vincent Curtis Educational Register and the South Florida Parenting Magazine. At Oak Ridge Military Academy, Wilson co-wrote and co-directed two teen reality shows that appeared on national television (Nickelodeon & ABC Family Channel). As an Adjunct Professor at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Wilson taught effective communications and military history for eighteen years. At Eastern Florida State College, Wilson wrote, directed, and produced a documentary entitled "Wounded Warriors - Their Struggle for Independence" for the Chi Nu chapter of Phi Theta Kappa. Since retiring from Eastern Florida State College, Wilson has devoted countless hours working on book manuscripts.

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Camp David Summit

Israeli Prime Minister Begin, U.S. President Carter, and Egyptian President Sadat

The Camp David Summit, held from 5-17 September 1978, was a pivotal moment both in the history of the Arab-Israeli dispute and U.S. diplomacy. Rarely had a U.S. President devoted as much sustained attention to a single foreign policy issue as President Jimmy Carter did over the summit’s two-week duration. Carter’s ambitious goals for the talks included breaking the negotiating deadlock and hammering out a detailed Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement. To this end, U.S. Middle East experts produced a draft treaty text, which served as the basis for the negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, would be revised numerous times during the Summit. The talks proved extremely challenging, especially when the trilateral format became impossible to sustain. Instead, President Carter and his Secretary of State Cyrus Vance met with the Egyptian and Israeli delegations individually over the course of the next twelve days.

Territory held by Israel: before the Six-Day War and after the Six-Day War

The talks ranged over a number of issues, including the future of Israeli settlements and airbases in the Sinai Peninsula, but it was Gaza and the West Bank that continued to pose the most difficulty. Specifically, the delegations were divided over the applicability of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 to a long-term agreement in the territories, as well as the status of Israel’s settlements during projected negotiations on Palestinian autonomy that would follow a peace treaty. In the end, while the Summit did not produce a formal peace agreement, it successfully produced the basis for an Egyptian-Israeli peace, in the form of two Framework documents, which laid out the principles of a bilateral peace agreement as well as a formula for Palestinian self-government in Gaza and the West Bank.

Camp David Accords

While the conclusion of the Camp David Accords represented significant progress, the process of translating the Framework documents into a formal peace treaty proved daunting. As with the Summit, Carter’s hopes for rapid progress were high, and the President hoped that a treaty text would be concluded in a matter of days. However, the controversy that developed between the Carter administration and the Begin government over the duration of an agreed freeze in the construction of Israeli settlements was quickly followed by the administration’s failure to win support from Jordan or Saudi Arabia for the Accords.

Beginning in October 1978, a series of talks in Washington broke down as a result of Israeli concerns over the timing of their withdrawal and Egyptian reservations regarding the impact of a peace treaty on its obligations to other Arab states. Other regional developments, especially the Iranian Revolution, distracted U.S. policymakers and raised Israeli concerns about its oil supply, resulting in an impasse during the winter of 1978–1979.

Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty

After Prime Minister Begin’s visit to the White House in early March 1979 failed to break the stalemate, Carter traveled to Israel on 10 March 1979. Having previously secured President Sadat’s consent to negotiate on behalf of Egypt, the President Carter engaged in three days of intensive talks with the Israelis. As a result of a series of compromises, notably a U.S. guarantee of Israel’s oil supply, omitting references to a special role for Egypt in Gaza, and Israeli agreement to make a number of unilateral gestures to the Palestinians, the U.S. and Israeli delegations agreed to a treaty text on 13 March 1979. President Sadat quickly assented to the agreement and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty was formally signed on 26 March 1979.

Egyptian President Sadat, U.S. President Carter, and Israeli Prime Minister Begin sign treaty

Following the Camp David Accords, Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. However, the subsequent 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was received with controversy among Arab nations, particularly the Palestinians. Egypt's membership in the Arab League was suspended (and not reinstated until 1989). PLO Leader Yasser Arafat said Let them sign what they like. False peace will not last.

In Egypt, various jihadist groups, such as Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya, used the Camp David Accords to rally support for their cause. Previously sympathetic to Sadat's attempt to integrate them into Egyptian society, Egypt's Islamists now felt betrayed and publicly called for the overthrow of the Egyptian president and the replacement of the nation's system of government with a government based on Islamic theocracy.

The last months of President Sadat's presidency were marked by internal uprising. He dismissed allegations that the rioting was incited by domestic issues, believing that the Soviet Union was recruiting its regional allies in Libya and Syria to incite an uprising that would eventually force him out of power. Following a failed military coup in June 1981, President Sadat ordered a major crackdown that resulted in the arrest of numerous opposition figures.

Assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

Assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

On 6 October 1981, a victory parade was held in Cairo, Egypt to commemorate the eighth anniversary of Egypt's crossing of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. President Sadat was protected by four layers of security and eight bodyguards, and the army parade should have been safe due to ammunition-seizure rules. As Egyptian Air Force Mirage jets flew overhead, distracting the crowd, Egyptian Army soldiers and troop trucks towing artillery paraded by. One truck contained the assassination squad, led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli. As it passed the tribune, Islambouli forced the driver at gunpoint to stop. From there, the assassins dismounted and Islambouli approached President Sadat with three hand grenades concealed under his helmet. President Sadat stood to receive his salute. According to Sadat’s nephew, The president thought the killers were part of the show when they approached the stands firing, so he stood saluting them, whereupon Islambouli threw all his grenades at Sadat, only one of which exploded (but fell short). Additional assassins rose from the truck, firing into the stands until they had exhausted their ammunition, and then attempted to flee. After President Sadat was hit and fell to the ground, people threw chairs around him to shield him from the hail of bullets.

The attack lasted about two minutes. President Sadat and ten others were killed outright or suffered fatal wounds. Twenty-eight attendees were wounded, including Vice President Hosni Mubarak, Irish Defense Minister James Tully, and four United States Armed Forces liaison officers. The Swedish ambassador, Olov Ternstrom, managed to escape unhurt.

Security forces were momentarily stunned, but reacted within 45 seconds. One of the attackers was killed, and the three others injured and arrested. The surviving assassins were tried and found guilty of assassinating the president and killing 10 others in the process; they were sentenced to capital punishment and were executed on 15 April 1982.

Egyptian state television, which was broadcasting the parade live, quickly cut to military music and Quranic recitations. Sadat was airlifted to a military hospital, and died nearly two hours later. Sadat's death was attributed to violent nervous shock and internal bleeding in the chest cavity, where the left lung and major blood vessels below it were torn.

Funeral of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

Former U.S. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter attended Sadat’s funeral

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was buried in the Unknown Soldier Memorial, located in the Nasr City district of Cairo. The inscription on his grave reads: The hero of war and peace. The funeral was attended by three former Presidents of the United States -- Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter -- as well as Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, French President François Mitterrand, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Italian President Sandro Pertini, Irish President Patrick Hillery, Spanish Prime Minister Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, and King Baudouin of Belgium. The sitting U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who had survived an assassination attempt of his own several months prior, opted not to attend because of the tense political situation, although his administration would be represented by Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Also in attendance was Army Chief of Staff Edward Shy Meyer, my former boss at the Pentagon when I worked in General Officer Management Office from 1978 to 1980.

Army Chief of Staff General Edward Shy Meyer

My MILPERCEN Assignment

Five years after my departure from the Pentagon, I received orders to return to the Military District of Washington (MDW). I was being reassigned to the U.S. Army Military Personnel Center (MILPERCEN) located in Alexandria, Virginia. Upon arriving at the Hoffman Building, I reported for duty in the Mobilization and Movements Control Branch (later redesignated as Travel Procedures Branch) where I was slated to work as a Military Personnel Analyst.

Captain Ray Wilson

Shortly after checking into my new office, I was greeted by a familiar face -- Colonel Frank Wise -- who I knew from our time working together at the Pentagon in the late-1970s. After reminiscing about old times, Colonel Wise (Chief, Enlisted Distribution Division) informed me that I would be serving as the subject matter expert for soldier/dependent travel entitlements, reassignment processing, passports, sponsorship, port calls, and dependent student travel. My responsibilities would include being the proponent for sixteen publications relating to the movement of soldiers/dependents; managing the Army’s $780-million Permanent Change of Station Moves Program; maintaining the accounts for rotational, operational and training movements within Congressional ceilings; providing administrative and operational support for six Personnel Assistance Points in the Continental United States (CONUS) and monitoring movement of transients through these activities. Colonel Wise also told me that I would be the HQDA interface between the personnel and transportation communities.

Colonel Frank Wise

With the aforementioned responsibilities now squarely resting on my shoulders, one of my first major acts was to monitor the movement of the 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) from their home base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Cairo, Egypt in June 1985. Upon arrival in Egypt, this unit would then begin serving a 6-month Peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula in accordance with the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty signed by Egyptian President Sadat, U.S. President Carter, and Israeli Prime Minister Begin in March 1979. During this unit’s 6-month deployment to the Sinai Peninsula, I would serve as their HQDA Liaison Officer for personnel and transportation related issues.

Peacekeeping Mission in Sinai

MFO Insignia

Origins of the MFO

The origins of the Multinational Force & Observers (MFO) lie in Annex I to the 1979 Treaty of Peace between Egypt and Israel, in which the Treaty Parties undertook to request the United Nations to provide a force and observers to supervise the implementation of the Treaty. When it did not prove possible to obtain Security Council approval for the stationing of a UN peacekeeping force in the Sinai, the Treaty Parties negotiated a Protocol in 1981 establishing the MFO as an alternative to the envisioned UN force.

The Protocol defines the MFO’s mission, provides for the appointment of a Director General to be responsible for the direction of the MFO, and stipulates that the expenses of the MFO which are not covered by other sources shall be borne equally by the Treaty Parties. The United States, which was instrumental in assisting the Treaty Parties in setting up the MFO, has formally pledged to provide one-third of the annual operating expenses of the organization, subject to Congressional authorization and appropriations. In addition to the equal funding provided by Egypt, Israel, and the United States, the MFO also presently receives contributions from the Governments of Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Thirteen States -- Australia, Canada, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Fiji, France, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uruguay -- currently provide the MFO with military personnel that make up the Force and perform specific and specialized tasks.

The Director General exercises his authority through his staff at the Headquarters in Rome, the Force Commander and his staff in the Sinai, and the Director General's Representatives and their staffs in Cairo and Tel Aviv.

Mission of the MFO

The mission of the MFO is to supervise the implementation of the security provisions of the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace and employ best efforts to prevent any violation of its terms.

Article II of Annex I to the Treaty of Peace establishes four security zones, three in the Sinai in Egypt and one in Israel along the international border. Limitations on military forces and equipment within each zone are stipulated in Annex I to the Treaty. It should be noted that in 1985, the United States provided 1200 troops (including 3rd Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) soldiers) out of 2687 authorized personnel.

MFO observation tower

To execute the mission, MFO personnel are assigned the following tasks: (1) Operation of checkpoints, reconnaissance patrols, and observation posts along the