Aeronautical Mass Murder

Aeronautical mass murder can be defined as the deliberate destruction of civilian aircraft in an effort to cause the death of its passengers and/or those on the ground. Although the act is not necessarily novel, its study remains underdeveloped. The first proven case of aeronautical mass murder in commercial aviation took place on October 10, 1933, when a United Airlines Boeing 247 crashed en route from Cleveland to Chicago. All seven passengers and three crewmembers were killed when the twin-engine aircraft went down just west of Gary, Indiana. An investigation indicated that a blast from an explosive device, constructed of a timer and nitroglycerine, caused the aircraft's fuselage to separate from its tail assembly. It was believed that the bomb had been hidden aboard the ...