Unexploded missile taken away by Kenyan police

Xinhua News Agency ^

[Clive]

MOMBASA, Kenya, Dec. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Kenyan bomb experts on Saturday took away an unexploded missile which was one of the two that were fired by terrorists at an Israeli passenger plane but missed as it departed from Mombasa a week ago.

The warhead lay nearby and experts said the explosives were still inside.

The missile was discovered by Nyango Mlala, a farmer in Ngindo village, Kaloleni, in his cassava plantation about 30 km from Mombasa city.

Mlala said he discovered the missile one day after the attacks when he went to inspect his maize and cassava plantation and reported the matter to a village elder.

Another missile exploded on impact about two km away from the unexploded one.

According to a police official who refused to be named, the one-meter missile was embedded in the ground and it took the police about two-and-half hours of careful digging to dislodge it.

Earlier, police attempted to pull it out by using ropes but they failed, which forced the explosives experts to resort to shovels and hoes to bring it out.

The police declined to speculate on the origin of the missile which bore writings: 9M 32M, 04 - 78, 04 1033, 04 - 78.

The experts, who included police military and one Mossad official of Israel, then packed it in a plastic bag and took it away. It had been guarded overnight by two Kenyan police officers.

On Nov. 28, a missile attack took place toward an Israeli chartered plane, which was taking off from the Moi International Airport in Mombasa with 261 passengers and 10 crew members on board.

The two missiles, however, missed the aircraft, which later landed safely in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The attack coincided with a car bomb blast in an Israeli-owned hotel, located in Mombasa on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast, during which a total of 16 people were killed and about 80 others were injured.

Currently, Kenyan Police Deputy Commissioner William Langat is leading a team of top Kenyan and Israeli investigators into the twin terrorist attacks on the hotel and aircraft.

Langat said he would confirm where the missile was made once investigations were completed. Enditem

[Squantos]

SA-7s have a 15 (+/-) second self destruct feature after they are launched. They don't tend to fall back anywhere. This text/story doesn't pass , disinformational IMO. The light blue color of the pic we saw last week indicate a "inert" version per se.

Of all the SA series I have seen and rendered safe in my duties as an explosive ordanance disposal technician I have never seen a live one that was "inert" blue. Just my opinion of course based on my my experience with them.

Archy ??? You ever see a blue SA series that was live ? Possible the rocket motor and seeker was live on a dummy inert warhead ? I've never seen one but that doesn't mean they don't exist of course :o)

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/sa-7.htm


Ya'll Stay Safe !

[archy]

Possibly the rocket motor and seeker was live on a dummy inert warhead?

Just because NATO uses blue for dummy training aids doesn't mean a thing...and be real careful if you ever decide to take apart a 20mmx139b Finnish antitank rifle round with the skyblue coding....

Yep, every 9K32 *SAM-7 Grail* Strela launcher unit I've ever run across has been eitherr that glossy Russian olive green or mustard-tan in colour, but I'm much less familiar with the Naval SA-N-5 version, which could very easily be blue in colour.

The 04-78 Lot Number marking is even more interesting, in that the missile appears to be of the vintage of those used by the counterinsurgents in Rhodesia who took down a couple of civilian Viscount passenger airliners and RhAF Canderra ground support bombers, fired by the late Joshua Nkomo's ZIPRA terrorists, though almost certainly fitted with a more recent 9B17 thermal battery, and possibly upgraded in other ways as well. I wonder if some impoverished Zimbabwean ordnance officer has been selling leftovers from the bush war, with or without the knowledge of his superiors...and if the buyers had some very detailed technical ability for reworking the things and the budget to do so, and accordingly cut out the self-destruct feature in an attempt to get either a longer range or a headon shot capability out of their available 9K32M. The Rhodesians had a Canberra take a Strela through the front intake of an engine during their experience with the things, in opposition to what all the books say about the Grail being a tail-attack-only *revenge weapon* good for firing only after the target has made a pass overhead, or from an angle offering a tailpipe shot. Maybe someone's figured out a way to hotrod the missiles to intentionally deliver the capability that probable lucky shot had- it had the Rhodie Air Force ordnance types quite concerned at the time....

My own experience firing the Russian missiles as a SAM gunner was with the 9K34 *SA-14 Gremlin* Strela-3, a bit better yet than the 9K32. They work okay, but the real way to go is with multiple launchers and multiple missiles- the East Germans used a quad launcher setup with 4 of the things setup side by side, and the shooters in Mombasa clearly had the idea down right. I wonder how many more of them they have....

-archy-/-