Fouga Magister

10 - MIG 15: Hydraulic failure above Mojave desert (with EN subtitles) - LOW FUEL HELICOPTER LIFE
I came across this video on a couple of other blogs. It's pretty cool, it's rolling along, and wait! What's that?

Fouga Magister at the 1:24 mark

That's a Fouga Magister, an airplane I had never heard of before I saw it on an episode of Bosch a couple of weeks ago. A little digging turns up this video, shot at the same airport.


Fouga Magister - California City Airport - Mojave Desert 2017
California City was somebody's post war dream that failed to materialize. Now it's a bedroom community for Edwards Air Force Base which is just down the road.

The Fouga Magister is a twin engine, two place, French military jet trainer from the 1950's. It was occasionally armed and used for ground attack in places like Africa. Rumor has it that it was used to shoot down the DC-6 carrying Dag Hammarskjöld to a peace conference in Africa:

In April 2014, The Guardian published evidence implicating Jan van Risseghem, a military pilot who served with the RAF during World War II, later with the Belgian Air Force, and who became known as the pilot of Moise Tshombe in Katanga. The article claims that an American NSA employee, former naval pilot Commander Charles Southall, working at the NSA listening station in Cyprus in 1961 shortly after midnight on the night of the crash, heard an intercept of a pilot's commentary in the air over Ndola – 3,000 miles away. Southall recalled the pilot saying: "I see a transport plane coming low. All the lights are on. I'm going down to make a run on it. Yes, it is the Transair DC-6. It's the plane," adding that his voice was "cool and professional". Then he heard the sound of gunfire and the pilot exclaiming: "I've hit it. There are flames! It's going down. It's crashing!" Based on aircraft registration and availability with the Katangese Air Force, registration KAT-93, a Fouga CM.170 Magister would be the most likely aircraft used and the website Belgian Wings claims that van Risseghem piloted the Magisters for the KAF in 1961. A further article was published by The Guardian in January 2019, repeating the allegations against van Risseghem and citing further evidence uncovered by the makers of the documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld, including refutations of his alibi that he was not flying at the time of the crash.

Dag Hammarskjöld! Now that's a name I haven't heard it a very long time. I guess that's not surprising since he died in 1961. Since I was a youngster at the time, I suspect he was another name that popped up in discussions my parents had, like Sun Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek.