A plane exploded over the Mediterranean — 57 years later we don’t know why
Families of 66 passengers and crew killed on board the British European Airways flight are still seeking answers 57 years after the plane exploded.
Their quest for justice has not been made any easier by mysterious classified documents, sealed away from the public by the Home Office until 2067.
Families have been seeking answers to this day since the explosion on October 12, 1967, after a bombing of the British European Airways CY284 on its way from Athens, Greece, to Nicosia in Cyprus.
Years later, the reason for the bombing is shrouded in mystery that resembles the plot of a James Bond film, involving theories and suspects at the heart of the Cold War-era colonial struggles.
All passengers and crew were killed when the De Havilland Comet plane crashed into the Mediterranean in a suspected assassination attempt targeting a Cypriot militia man.
The plane was carrying dozens of passengers from the UK, Greece and Cyprus along with some US citizens. The night before departing Athens, passengers had boarded it from London Heathrow and many had stayed on, bound for Nicosia on what was meant to be a routine flight.
But in the early hours of the morning, as the aircraft was cruising at about 29,000 ft, it exploded above some of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean.
Whoever had planted the bomb almost succeeded in hiding all the evidence had not some bodies and debris remained on the surface.
Simon Hepworth, 65, a retired police officer, remembers the ‘traumatic’ day the explosion made headlines around the world.
His father worked with BEA captain Gordon Blackwood and the families were close, living some door away from each other in Bracknell, Berkshire, and Gordon’s daughter babysat with the Hepworth family.
Gordon was one of the people killed when the aircraft was bombed and his death was a ‘tremendous shock.’
‘Being in the BEA family it was very close to home. It was something that stayed with me for many years,’ he said.
Since 2017, Simon has been researching the tragedy and has written a book about it.
He told Metro: ‘It was something my parents never forgot. My father had kept a set of BEA pilot wings that came from Gordon’s uniform and I was able to give them back to his daughter.
‘For people who lost family members, it’s like a wound. There was no information for decades so the families were never able to get any kind of closure and that’s significant.’
Together with a surviving family member of one of the victims, Christine, they have lobbied for a review of the investigation.
The Met Police was unable to reopen the case all these years later, but a review was carried out to see if they followed all apparent leads.
‘Their finding was no, they didn’t. If this investigation was done now, it would be done very differently,’ Simon said.
The Met Police review in 2021 came to the same conclusion. It said that while it is ‘possible to defend the MPS position in 1968’ a similar incident nowadays would ‘attract a completely different response.’
It suggested that other ‘police enquiries should have been made at the time, which would have involved liaison at a senior government level.’
There was no record of ‘any official approach to the Greek and Cypriot government’ to support the police investigation, the review added.
It noted: ‘A properly managed and directed investigative strategy, with the full support of the host nation, may well have identified a suspect group….there does not seem to have been any commitment to pursue those responsible and in fact, it appears that obstacles were placed in the way to frustrate or undermine the enquiry, both in the UK and in Cyprus.’
Simon commended the work of the Met Police review team in revealing the way its own team worked in 1968. But he still wants to see the remaining papers so that the families can finally get closure.
Why was the bomb planted?
A total of 51 bodies were recovered from the sea a day after the disaster. At first, investigators thought the jet had collided with another aircraft.
However, investigators discovered military-grade plastic explosive material in one of the Comet’s passenger seats floating in the sea, according to publicly available records.
Who was the target of the bombing?
The short answer is, no one knows for sure as some of the files remain sealed off.
However, the main theory suggests it was an assassination attempt on Georgios Grivas, a paramilitary leader in the Cypriot War of Independence and a key figure in securing Cyprus’s independence from the British Empire.
Hepworth’s theory – based on his extensive research and interviews in Greece and Cyprus – is that Grivas was booked to be on the flight but he changed his plans last minute.
He said he found this out after speaking with Grivas’s since-deceased former staff officer who claimed he made the booking himself.
‘He had made a tentative booking on that flight but he then became aware that one of Grivas’s political rivals was trying to track his movements. Therefore, he cancelled the flight for Grivas last minute and booked him on the next flight.
‘But he said he didn’t realise that the attack on Grievas was going to be a bomb attack and on the entire aircraft.’
‘There was a lot of violence in Cyprus before the independence,’ Hepworth explained, comparing the conflict to the situation in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
‘This was also in the immediate run-up to the problems with the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots trying to get rid of the Turkish Cypriots which in 1974 led to the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey.’
Grivas was motivated by an independent Cyprus free of British colonial rule and uniting the island with Greece.
The island gained independence in August 1960, but not before the British colonial administration had offered a hefty sum for anyone with information leading to Grivas’s arrest.
Around the time of the plane explosion, Grivas was a key figure in leading the Greek Cypriot forces against a possible Turkish attack, and he made many enemies during his long career as a paramilitary fighter and leader.
One of those enemies is thought to have been Polycarpos Giorkatzis, the regional commander of EOKA in Cyprus – whose top leader Grivas was – and Archbishop Makarios III, the president of Cyprus.
The men were involved in a power struggle over the National Guard, and it is rumoured that Makarios may have wanted to get rid of Grivas in a way that could be masked as an accident.
It was also a sensitive and volatile time the British government was trying to navigate.
After the crash, a police investigation was launched by the Met Police into the incident with complex details as it happened in international airspace and the victims were of various nationalities.
A publicly available letter in the National Archives from the British Foreign Office to Detective Superintendent Percy Browne said that if he was to find evidence to suggest that the explosion was ‘arranged in order to harm someone in politics in Cyprus or Greece then a very delicate situation would arise.’
A Met Police spokesperson said: ‘The bombing of CY284 in 1967 was an atrocity which claimed the lives of 66 people, including 21 UK nationals. No-one has been brought to justice, and there remains many unanswered questions.
‘It is a mark of the courage and tenacity of the families of those who lost their lives on that fateful flight that they continue to campaign for justice.
‘It was a complaint by a surviving relative in 2021 that prompted the Met to carry out a review of the enquiries made into this matter at the time it happened.
‘We hope the findings of this review give those families further clarity and understanding about the circumstances of the attack, and what the Met and other partners did in the immediate aftermath.
‘As with all reviews of past investigations, however long ago they occurred, we will reflect on what lessons we can learn and apply to the work we do today.
‘We have remained focused on getting answers for the families and recently had the chance to attend a memorial for victims where we were able pay our respects with those families.’
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