Lufthansa Flight 181


Lufthansa Flight 181, a Boeing 737-230C jet airliner named Landshut, was hijacked on 13 October 1977 by four militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine while en route from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. The hijacking aimed to secure the release of eleven notorious Red Army Faction leaders held in West German prisons and two Palestinians held in Turkey. This event was part of the so-called German Autumn, intended to increase pressure on the West German government. The hijackers diverted the flight to several locations before ending in Mogadishu, Somalia, where the crisis concluded in the early morning hours of 18 October 1977 under the cover of darkness. The West German counter-terrorism unit GSG 9, with ground support from the Somali Armed Forces, stormed the aircraft, rescuing all 87 passengers and four crew members. The captain of the flight was killed by the hijackers earlier in the ordeal.

Background

The hijacking was a dramatic escalation in the so-called German Autumn of 1977, a period marked by a series of terrorist activities in West Germany. It was directly linked to the dramatic kidnapping in Braunsfeld, Cologne, of Hanns Martin Schleyer, a prominent West German industrialist, by the Red Army Faction "Commando Siegfried Hausner" group on 5 September 1977. Militants of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, working in concert with the RAF, hijacked the Lufthansa Landshut plane to secure the release of their imprisoned leaders and comrades, predominantly held in the West German supermax Stammheim Prison, as well as two Palestinians held in Turkey. The hijacking was intended to increase pressure on the West German government to meet these demands. It culminated in the West German GSG 9 rescue operation, codenamed "Feuerzauber", which resulted in the liberation of all 87 passengers and four of the five crew members. Three hijackers were killed during the rescue, and one was captured alive.

Lufthansa crew

Two flight crew and three cabin crew operated the round-trip flight from Frankfurt to Palma de Mallorca:
  • Jürgen Schumann : Captain. Born in Colditz in 1940, he was a former German Air Force Lockheed F-104 Starfighter pilot. On 16 October at Aden Airport, after being permitted to leave the aircraft to check its airworthiness following a forced landing on an unpaved sand strip, he also spoke with Yemeni airport authorities to try to ensure the plane remained grounded. On his return, he boarded the plane after a long absence, only to be murdered by terrorist leader Zohair Yousif Akache in a fit of rage, fueled by suspicions, before he could explain his reasons for the long absence. It was believed this act was also intended to add weight to the kidnappers' demands. Posthumously awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit 1st class for his actions during the hijack, he was survived by his wife and two sons. The building housing the Lufthansa Pilot School in Bremen was named in his honour, as was a street in the Bavarian city of Landshut. He is buried in Babenhausen in Hesse.
  • Jürgen Vietor : Co-Pilot. Born in Kassel in 1942, a former German Navy pilot. He piloted the Landshut from Aden to Mogadishu. He returned to work just six weeks after the hijacking, and the first aircraft he was assigned to was the Landshut which had already been repaired and returned to service. He was also awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class for his actions during the hijacking. He retired in 1999. In December 2008, he returned the medal in protest over the release on probation of the former Red Army Faction terrorist Christian Klar, who had been involved in the kidnap and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer in 1977.
  • Hannelore Piegler : Chief flight attendant. Austrian. She was in charge of the cabin crew, servicing the first-class passengers. For her courage and dedication to the crew and passengers during the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181, she was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit. Subsequently, she authored a book titled Entführung, Hundert Stunden zwischen Angst und Hoffnung, detailing the events and her journey through the ordeal.
  • Anna-Maria Staringer : Flight attendant. Norwegian. Along with Piegler and Dillmann, she took responsibility for looking after and supporting the terrified passengers. She was also awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit for her courage. She marked her 28th birthday on the flight. In an unsettling gesture, Akache, the leader of the hijack group, ordered a birthday cake and champagne via the radio in Dubai. The airport catering supplied a cake with 28 candles, embellished with "Happy Birthday Anna-Maria".
  • Gabriele Dillmann : Flight attendant. Despite her young age, she was a pillar of support and hope for the other hostages and was dubbed the "Angel of Mogadishu" by the German press for her courageous behaviour. Along with her flight crew, she was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit for her courage. She subsequently married Lufthansa pilot Rüdiger von Lutzau, who piloted the Lufthansa Boeing 707 aircraft with the GSG 9 counter-terrorism unit that landed in Mogadishu. As Gabriele von Lutzau, she has acquired an international reputation as a sculptor, principally of figures in beechwood, and has shown her work in numerous exhibitions in Germany and throughout Europe.

    Hijackers

  • Zohair Yousif Akache, nom de guerre Captain Mahmoud: Also known by his Iranian passport alias Ali Hyderi. He was the leader of the hijacker group. Growing up in a refugee camp near Beirut, he later studied at the Chelsea College of Aeronautical and Automobile Engineering in London, leaving in 1975 after gaining his aeronautical diploma. A veteran terrorist, he had already murdered two Yemen Arab Republic diplomats and the wife of one of them in London on 10 April 1977, and was wanted by Scotland Yard in connection with the killings. The political assassination took place outside the Royal Lancaster Hotel, where the former Prime Minister of Yemen, Kadhi Abdullah al-Hajri, his wife, Fatimah, and a Yemeni diplomat, Abdullah Ali al Hammami, minister plenipotentiary at the embassy, were murdered in their Mercedes vehicle using a silenced.32 automatic pistol. Akache left the country that afternoon via Heathrow Airport, using a Kuwaiti passport in the name of Ahmed Badir al-Majid. More than a year earlier, Akache had also been sentenced to six months in prison for hitting a police officer while attending a meeting in Hyde Park, London, and was later deported. At the time of his arrest, British police found Palestine Liberation Organization posters and pictures of PLO leaders in his hotel room.
  • Wabil Harb : Also known as Nabil Harb, Iranian passport alias Riza Abbasi. Son of wealthy Christian parents in Beirut, he occasionally exchanged friendly words with the hostages. The passengers referred to him as "the boy".
  • Souhaila Andrawes Sayeh : Also known by her Iranian passport alias Soraya Ansari. Born a Palestinian in Israel, she studied English literature in Baghdad. Despite being critically injured, she was the only one of the four hijackers to survive. The passengers referred to her as "the fat one".
  • Hind Alameh : Also known as Nadia Shehadah Yousuf Duaibes, Iranian passport alias Shanaz Gholoun. Born to Christian parents in Lebanon, she was described by survivors of Lufthansa Flight 181 as an unusually pretty, petite girl. Sometimes, she was the only one who laughed on the plane, and the passengers referred to her as "the little one".
At the time, the hijackers' names remained unknown to the passengers and crew of Lufthansa Flight 181, other than Captain Mahmoud's alias, so the passengers and crew referred to them by nicknames. To this day, the survivors still refer to them as "the little one," "the fat one," "the boy," and "Captain Mahmoud".

Hostage ordeal

During the five-day ordeal, the hijackers terrorized the passengers and crew with verbal abuse, physical assaults, and restraint, subjecting them to psychological torture and threats of further physical harm or death. They also sifted through the passengers' passports, luggage, and personal possessions, searching for clues indicating Jewish identity. At one point, Mahmoud found a Montblanc pen in a passenger's luggage. Mistaking the snowcap logo on the cap of the pen for the Star of David, he accused the female passenger of being Jewish. Despite the passenger's desperate denial, Mahmoud declared, "You report for shooting tomorrow morning at 8:30, understood?" Almost as feared as the leader Mahmoud was Andrawes Sayeh, whom some passengers later described as equally zealous.
Aribert Martin, one of the West German GSG 9 commandos who stormed the Lufthansa Landshut aircraft in Mogadishu to rescue the hostages, recalled, "The first thing that hit me was an unbelievable stench. The terrorists hadn't let the hostages go to the toilet, so the passengers had to relieve themselves in their seats. This had been going on for five days. I could smell that stench for years." This recollection was echoed by his colleague, Peter Horstmüller, who also stormed the aircraft, and other GSG 9 commandos.

Key West German rescue personnel

  • Lieutenant Colonel Ulrich Wegener : Founder and commander of GSG 9, the specialized counter-terrorism tactical intervention unit of the Federal Border Guard, established by West Germany in 1972 shortly after the Munich Olympic massacre. Wegener planned and led the daring operation to rescue the hostages on Lufthansa Flight 181.
  • Major Klaus Blätte : Deputy commander of GSG 9 in 1977 who took part in the operation to storm the Landshut at Mogadishu. When Wegener was promoted in 1979, Blätte succeeded him as commander of GSG 9.
  • Minister Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski : Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery, designated by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as his special envoy to coordinate the political negotiations with various foreign governments to facilitate the release or rescue of the Landshut hostages. Due to his excellent contacts and personal relationships with Arab leaders, he was nicknamed "Ben Wisch" by the German press. When Helmut Schmidt was succeeded by Helmut Kohl, Wischnewski became a traveling consultant to Arab, African, and South American countries, advising them on negotiating techniques and pacification policies to deal with terrorist and insurgent groups. He died in 2005.
  • Chancellor Helmut Schmidt : German Federal Chancellor from 1974 and 1982, he adopted a tough, uncompromising stance on the Hanns Martin Schleyer kidnapping and the Lufthansa 181 hijacking in 1977. He authorized the GSG 9 mission to rescue the Landshut hostages, and his anti-terrorism policies were successful in overcoming the long-standing threat posed by the Red Army Faction. After retiring from the Bundestag in 1986, he helped found the committee supporting the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union and the creation of the European Central Bank. He died in 2015.