MONUMENT TO EL AL FLIGHT VICTIMS

Well known for its excellent security, the Israeli national airline, El Al, has had only one incident in its history when one of its aircraft was shot down. This happened over Bulgaria at the height of the Cold War. 

In the early morning of 27 July 1955 El Al Flight 402, a Lockheed L-409 Constellation, took off from London bound for Tel Aviv. It carried 58 people onboard. It was supposed to flfly over Yugoslavia and Greece, because Communist Bulgaria did not allow non-Warsaw Pact aircraft in its skies. 

West of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border, however, the aircraft changed course and entered Bulgarian airspace near Tran. Two Soviet-manufactured MiG-15s were immediately sent from Sofifia to tail the El Al aircraft through western Bulgaria. 

The MiG pilots would later contend that the Israeli aircraft was not clearly marked as a passenger plane and that they had used all means of warning it, including fifiring tracer bullets. But the Israeli plane continued on southwards towards Greece. Shortly before it was due to leave Bulgarian territory, radio orders to shoot it down were transmitted. 

Flight 402 ended in a fifireball near the Bulgarian town of Petrich. All onboard died. The Bulgarian Communist government did not concede what had happened until a day later. It did appoint a commission of investigation, which concluded that the Israeli aircraft had violated Bulgarian airspace, but also that the Bulgarian response 

was disproportionate. Bulgaria refused to allow a six-member Israeli team of investigators 

to look into the case. It did not permit even its own prosecutors to interrogate the pilots. Three Israeli experts would later be admitted near the site of the crash, but almost all the debris had already been cleared away. The Israelis concluded that the plane had deviated from its course owing to high winds. 

In 1957 Israel sued Bulgaria at the International Court in The Hague. The court ordered Israel and Bulgaria to settle the dispute themselves. Bulgaria paid out $500,000 to the families of the dead passengers, a fraction of the $6,850,000 originally demanded. 

The reasons for the shooting-down continue to be unclear. Some suggest that the El Al pilots made a navigational error through fatigue, others surmise that the aircraft was downed because it was carrying a contraband shipment of silver. Yet others claim the plane was shot down because a Mossad agent being sought by the Soviets had boarded the plane in Vienna, and Bulgaria merely acted on Soviet orders. 

The location of the crash in the area of Rupite, near the border with Greece, remained unmarked up to 2019 when the Israeli Embassy unveiled a small monument to commemorate the victims. The idea for the monument had been put forward by a students' club called Anne Frank in Petrich.