Through the Curtain

BULGARIA

One of the most highly fortified and guarded pieces of real estate in Europe is a patch of ground where the borders of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece meet in the wild Belasica Mountains overlooking the Struma and Strumica river valleys, one of the historic invasion routes to the Aegean Sea. There, one sunlit morning last week, Greek Lieut. Vassili Arkoudas, on duty in the most forward of the Greek outposts, was startled by the sound of heavy antiaircraft fire.

From his stone observation post, a scant 300 ft. from the Bulgarian border, Arkoudas and a handful of tough, mustached Greek soldiers saw an aircraft coming over the Ograzden mountain, which rises nearly 6,000 ft. on the Bulgarian side of the Strumica river valley. The plane, a plainly marked Lockheed Constellation of El Al Israel Airlines, was about ten miles away and approaching.

"I realized that it was hit when I saw a long thick trail of smoke and then fire break out," said Arkoudas. "The pilot was obviously trying to keep control, and I think he tried to make a wide sweeping turn, all the while losing altitude rapidly. I thought he was going to make it onto the Struma plain. He didn't. About 1,500 ft. off the ground the airplane disappeared in what looked like a big flash explosion, although I heard nothing. The next thing I saw was a mass of debris falling straight down." In that mass of debris died 57 people, passengers and crew.

The Constellation was on the regular weekly flight from London to Israel via Paris, Vienna and Istanbul. Because Communist Bulgaria's borders are closed to all but Communist aircraft, the flight course normally follows a twelve-mile-wide corridor across Yugoslavia and takes a sharp dog leg around southwest Bulgaria, before flying across Greece to Turkey. The man who originally charted the course for El Al, Captain Stanley Hinks, 35, was at the controls. Among his passengers were twelve Americans, all New Yorkers on their way to visit friends and relatives in Israel. Captain Hinks's last message, radioed from the smoke-trailing Constellation, "We are going down in flames. Trying forced landing."

After 24 hours' silence, Sofia Radio charged that the plane had edged onto Bulgarian territory and said that it was shot down by trigger-happy Bulgarian antiaircraft gunners. The Communist government of Bulgaria expressed its "deep regret." When a three-man Israeli investigation commission arrived at the crash site, the Bulgars had removed most of the wreckage.

The U.S. and Britain joined with the Israelis in an indignant protest at the murder of their nationals. Despite the silken talk at Geneva, the Curtain still was made of Iron.

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