A missile tore an engine from OK1 over Angola. The crew landed Botswana’s presidential jet on a bush strip. Everyone on board survived.

Staff Reporter

On 7 August 1988 Botswana’s presidential jet OK1 left Gaborone for Luanda. The British Aerospace BAe 125-800 carried President Quett Masire and a small delegation. The flight was bound for a Frontline States summit.

At 16:32 the aircraft was at 35 000 feet over south-central Angola near Cuito Bie. A missile struck the starboard engine. The engine separated from the airframe. A second missile hit the falling engine or passed close by.

Missile strike on OK1 over Angola

The missile came from an Angolan MiG-23. Cuban pilots flew many of these aircraft at the time. Angola later said the jet was mistaken for an enemy aircraft. The country was still at war. Surface-to-air missiles may also have been fired and missed.

Colonel Albert Scheffers of the Botswana Defence Force was the captain. British Aerospace training captain Arthur Ricketts sat as co-pilot. The impact incapacitated Scheffers. Ricketts took control. The autopilot disengaged. The aircraft pitched up. Ricketts recovered it and began a rapid descent.

Oxygen masks failed to deploy properly. The cabin suffered explosive decompression and shrapnel damage. Metal fragments entered the cabin on the right side.

Emergency landing after OK1 was hit

Ricketts steered the aircraft toward the airstrip at Cuito Bie, about 40 kilometres away. Five minutes after the explosion the jet landed on the bush strip. Landing speed was high. Systems for flaps, undercarriage and brakes still worked.

President Masire was hit by a piece of fan blade or shrapnel. The fragment missed his spinal column. Chief of Protocol Bashi Ikitseng was the most seriously injured. Other passengers and crew suffered lighter injuries or none. No one died.

Cuban doctors at Cuito Bie treated the wounded. Masire and Ikitseng later received further care in Britain. The delegation returned to Gaborone that evening on an Angolan presidential aircraft provided by President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Aftermath of the OK1 Angola incident

Angola apologised. Officials said the jet had been taken for an enemy target. Communication failures between air traffic control and the air defence system were cited. Angola paid for the repairs. The aircraft was rebuilt by British Aerospace and later sold.

The route taken that day remains disputed. Corridor UG853D over central Angola had been closed to civilian traffic. Alternative routes existed via Zimbabwe or Zambia. The jet had only recently been delivered to Botswana. It was intended to end reliance on South African charter aircraft for presidential travel.

The incident occurred weeks after heavy fighting around Cuito Cuanavale and days before the announcement of a ceasefire framework involving South Africa, Angola and Cuba. Botswana was a Frontline State. The summit in Luanda went ahead.

Ricketts later received recognition for the recovery. Scheffers and the crew were credited with keeping the aircraft controllable long enough to reach the strip. Masire described the event as traumatic but said the power of God had preserved those on board.

The damaged OK1 is one of the clearest recorded cases of a civilian head-of-state aircraft struck by air-to-air missiles in African skies during the late Cold War period.

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