Investigator Wouter Botes pieces together Rietbok crash puzzle

On March 13 1967, SAA Flight 406, known as the Rietbok, took off from Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) en route to East London Airport (now King Phalo Airport) with five crew members and 20 passengers. By 5.30pm all on-board were dead.

The Rietbok Crash, as it since became known, continues to inspire conspiracy theories, largely due to the lack of wreckage and presence of then-acting Broederbond chair Johannes Bruwer and US anti-apartheid activist Audrey Rosenthal on-board.

For pilot and aviation investigator Wouter Botes, however, these conspiracies always rung hollow.

“I cannot for the life of me accept that there is an unsolved mystery,” Botes told his captive audience at the East London Museum on Tuesday evening.

Botes walked listeners through the events on that fateful day.

“The aircraft first flew from Johannesburg to East London and then to Port Elizabeth, then the route was set for East London and then back to Johannesburg,” he said. 

“The captain [Captain Lipawsky] took on fuel so that if he could not land in East London, he would pass and fly all the way to Johannesburg.”

The weather on the day was stormy with poor visibility due to low cloud cover, so the pilots decided to deviate from the standard flight route across the land and instead chose a roundabout path over the sea. 

“The pilot knew if he flew this route, he would be over the sea, there would be no mountains to hit and the altitude could be easily determined,” Botes said. 

For a long time, all Botes had were theories. That all changed in 2021.

On October 16 2021, Herald night editor John Harvey’s article ‘Search for the doomed Rietbok’ was published in the Saturday Dispatch. 

A few days later, a mysterious package was delivered to The Herald’s offices. 

“It was addressed to him [Botes] so I did ask him if he wanted me to open it. He said no and asked me to forward it on to him,” said Harvey.

Inside was a treasure trove of information.

“Inside was the actual transcript typed up a day or two after the accident with the weather reports, the telexes, the messages that were sent, all the transcripts of the tower,” an excited Botes explained. 

Now Botes believed he had all he needed to put the final pieces together. It all came down to the plane’s altimeter settings on the day.

“At an airport, if it is 500ft above sea level then it doesn’t mean that the air density is 500ft above sea level.

“The tower looks and says the QNH [the local altimeter pressure setting] is 1024, so you set your altimeter at 1024 and it tells you exactly how high you are at the airport.

“They give you the QNH and you take off.

“All planes in the world, if they go through the transition altitude they switch to one standard QNE — 1013 — so that if someone is at Flight Level 37 and someone is at 35, their altimeters are the same.

“When you come down from the transition level, the tower needs to give you the local QNH so you know exactly how high you are.”

But according to the documents now in Botes’ possession, that last step never happened so the pilot had no idea how high he was on his approach to East London. 

“The pilot decided to go down earlier than he should have to get under the clouds — we call it ‘scud running’ — and then make an S-turn to East London to land on Runway 10, which is now Runway 11,” he said.

The final recorded words from Flight 406 were: “EL 406 we are now 20 miles out and we are seaward of the coastline and descending through 4,000ft. Roger, we will attempt an approach on Runway 10.”

“Was he at 4,000ft?” Botes asked. “The pilot thought he was.”

After dropping below the clouds, the pilot turned left to begin his approach to the runway.

“As he turned left, the wing hit the water and the plane went over. The nose hit the water and the nose broke up from the impact.

“As it hit the water, the water came in from the front. It burst through the top, flushed everything out and everything including the bodies was washed out to sea. 

“The crash was extremely violent and severe. It was all over in 10 seconds.”

Botes said he was still raising funds to finance a proper search for the remaining wreckage, and credited the unique conditions along the East London coastline with hampering previous recovery efforts so far. 

As to the many conspiracies suggesting the crash was deliberate, Botes dismissed such claims.

“There’s no proof the plane was brought down deliberately.

“I don’t care for any controversy. The crash was a tragedy and it was an accident.”