The East London Museum could soon unveil a piece of aviation history, as Wouter Botes, aviation adventurer and Rietbok crash enthusiast, along with his team, conducted sonar imaging near Kayser’s Beach on September 21.
Their mission: to salvage well-preserved parts of the ill-fated Rietbok wreck for public display, bringing a new chapter of this tragic event to light.
The SAA Flight 406 wreck, also known as Rietbok tragedy of March 13 1967, claimed 25 souls when it crashed into the sea off Kayser’s Beach en route to East London.
Botes and his team, skippered by Southern Cross cruises’ John Barry, took to the sea this past Saturday and using sidescan sonar equipment, located the wreck and took images, in a process called wreck mapping.
These images, which have been sent for processing, will be used to consider if there are pieces of the wreck that can be recovered.
Both EL Museum and the Kruger Museum in Pretoria will be allocated pieces from the wreck.
Recovering artifacts for museums is crucial for preserving history and connecting people to the past. Artifacts serve as tangible links to important events, cultures, and individuals, allowing the public to engage with history in a more meaningful way and museums offer a space where people can learn from these items.
For researchers and historians, these items provide invaluable data.
Sidescan sonar is a technology used to create images of the ocean floor and objects on or near it. Developed in the 1950s, this tool uses sound waves to produce a detailed, two-dimensional image of underwater surfaces.
The sonar device, called a transducer, sends sound waves through the water as it moves, and can be mounted on a boat, either on its bottom, side, or towed behind.
The sound waves bounce back, creating images of the area being scanned.
Botes confirmed that wreck mapping the site is only the first phase and pending available funding, they hope to start retrieving pieces from the wreck soon provided it can be done safely given recovery dives for heavy artifacts can be dangerous. An estimated date for when the retrieval may happen has not been determined.
EL Museum principal scientist, Kevin Cole said that this wreck mapping expedition, outside of presenting the first step towards an opportunity to reclaim a piece of this invaluable history, also lays the foundation for further research and reveals the challenges involved in dealing with material that lies at a depth approximately 65m on the seabed.
Botes concurs adding that modern technology has given present generations the opportunity to reinvestigate previously unsolved national mysteries, like the Rietbok, which have shaped the country’s landscape.
Cole said: “The Rietbok was SA’s major aviation disaster by a national carrier, and it occurred off our coast and, as such, EL Museum in part carries the responsibility to lodge the historical information and any artifacts that may be associated with the tragic crash.
“The material that may be recovered will be evaluated for its display and educational value and accompanied by an appropriate display that interprets the facts of what happened and respects the surviving families of the deceased.”
Botes’ years long preoccupation with the Rietbok crash has led him to conclude that the tragedy was caused by the pilot’s poor judgement on the night of the accident.
Rietbok was captained by veteran pilot Gordon Lipawsky who was joined by First Officer Brian Trenwith.
From his research, Botes believes that cockpit resource management, which means the interaction between the two pilots, was skewed by a power imbalance which saw experienced Lipawsky overpower his junior Trenwith’s ability to contradict him on Lipawsky’s decision to fly assessing the distance visually as opposed to following standard procedure.
Botes believes that the real mystery therefore of the Rietbok is why an experienced and respected pilot like Lipawsky would have abandoned normal procedures on that flight.
Botes decries what he believes are conspiracy theories that blame the crash on political motives or a heart attack suffered by the pilot.
Former journalist John Harvey had met people who knew others who had died in the crash and he believes that there is grounds to look further into the case beyond what Botes concludes as the reason for the crash.
Harvey added, “I sincerely hope for the sake of the families of the deceased that the investigation will continue.
“They deserve to know the truth one way or another.”
