Darkest Days by Dates Down Under: Part 1
Moving a Mountain — The Crash of Flight TE901: November 28 1979
This "Darkest Days by Dates Down Under" series explores how New Zealand’s crises are thematically encoded with historical riffs to signal authorship, cooperation, scapegoats and caution — while telegraphing hidden objectives.Introduction
The crash of an Air New Zealand DC-10 in Antarctica in 1979 remains controversial, with arguments ranging over points that finger blame within an ‘accident’ paradigm.
Yet, the discordance over matters of culpability for the catalytic crash — involving 257 deaths, the loss of a DC10 and the acrimony between the main parties — never considered whether the collision’s cause should’ve been investigated as air terrorism.
In this dispatch former Māori Television news and current affairs editor Steve Snoopman, reveals uncanny coincidences of key dates associated with Air New Zealand’s Antarctic Flight programme. Some key events appear to have been timed to riff off historical events, to signal a staged catalytic crisis was set in motion. He makes the case that this crash of Air NZ DC10 in 1979 jolted the political trajectory of N.Z.
In this “Darkest Days by Dates Down Under” series, Snoopman surveys the curious coincidences of calamities, catastrophes, or crises that jolted the nation while power, wealth and control were accumulated. In this disturbing multi-decade sketch, Snoopman traces the creepy trail of spooky minds, who he believes plot machinations with an eye on the past and a dark vision of the future. The circumstantial evidence reveals an awful picture of each new administration becoming embroiled in a cover-up of a staged event made to appear as an accident, a natural disaster, or a crisis caused by an unhinged man, or an ‘unsolved’ crime. This wretched criminal deep state network will continue plotting events with this historical riffing modus operandi until it becomes too risky to continue to do so, or because they have been caught and jailed.
In the case of the demise of Flight TE901 on November 28 1979, Snoopman believes that crash was a novel coup d’état designed to threaten the Establishment to move bureaucratic mountains for the envisioned trans-corporate heist of the economy. And, periodically, the themed staged crises make threatening references back to Erebus.
Thus, my key finding is that the Erebus Crash was thematically encoded with navigational, tragedy and quest metaphors codified into the historical riffs to signal cooperation, caution and a crisis cover-up — while telegraphing a spooky objective.
It appears that a foreign intelligence agency penetrated the state bureaucracy, and had free rein to inflict an air terrorism takedown with impunity, to politically capture key insiders of the Muldoon Government, Air New Zealand, the Establishment and the National Security State by embroiling them in a cover-up of a horrendous, epic crime.
Air New Zealand McConnell Douglas DC-10 Crash, 28 November 1979 — Death Toll: 257
The crash of Air New Zealand Flight TE-901 into the Mount Erebus, Antarctica, on November 28 1979, was ranked at the time as the world’s fourth deadliest civilian airliner disaster. Three of these crashes involved McConnell Douglas DC-10s. The Air NZ-owned McConnell Douglas DC-10 slammed into the volcanic mountain, on a 13° slope below Fang Ridge — reported at the time to have been 13,000 feet high.
All 257 aboard perished when the impact forces shredded the exploding aircraft.
The strange crash, after 13 successful Antarctic Flights, embroiled the airline, the Ministry of Transport’s Civil Aviation Division and the Beehive in an epic cover-up. The flight coordinates were altered hours before take-off by the airline, without telling the crew they were heading toward a misty mountain: Erebus.
The Navigation Section had an opportunity to tell the crews of a discrepancy in the final waypoint before the 13th flight, after Captain Simpson called Captain Johnson.
The destination point was altered hours before the 14th flight. This late change appears to have been contingent on overcast weather conditions. The pilots, who had never flown to Antarctica, were unfamiliar with whiteout conditions and didn’t see Mt Erebus. The date of the fatal flight carried historic potency for NZ’s flagship air carrier. Key events in the demise of Air New Zealand Flight TE901 are entwined with the fateful Antarctic expedition of Captain Robert F. Scott to locate the South Pole.
One year into their journey, on 28 November 1911, Captain Scott’s team first sighted the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. It would be Scott’s last Antarctic expedition.
On November 9 1979, the captains who would pilot the fatal 901 Antarctic flight attended a flight briefing, wherein they were led to believe the computerized flight path would take the plane down over the sea ice of McMurdo Sound, rather than toward Mount Erebus; a difference of 31 miles. ‘Coincidently’, November 9 1769 was the historical date that Captain James Cook and astronomer Mr Green, made their calculations from measuring the Transit of Mercury across the sun, to fix the near-precise location of New Zealand on a world chart. This ‘coincidence’ is remarkable.
Even the first sighting of the DC10 wreckage seems to have been controlled to coincide with the date that Captain Scott’s doomed Antarctic expedition left N.Z.
The U.S. Navy had been searching in the wrong places, despite Air NZ’s navigation section ‘working out’ their ‘error’ with the flight coordinates during the evening of November 28. Curiously, the U.S. Navy did not establish what the changed final waypoint destination flight coordinates were, when the flight path was transmitted to McMurdo Station after the plane took off. Justice Peter Mahon suspected foul play. He didn’t believe the misleading coordinates sent to McMurdo were yet another error.
On November 29 1979, a U.S. Navy Hercules aircrew sighted the DC-10 wreckage, and radioed a few minutes before 1am that they saw no survivors. On November 29th 1910, Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova sailed from Port Chalmers, at 3pm.
Whereas, It Happened Today in New Zealand (A.W. Reed: 1973) stated the Terra Nova sailed from Port Chalmers on November 28 1910 carrying Captain Robert F. Scott.
Like the degree of culpability of Captain Jim Collins in the crash of Air New Zealand DC10, the degree of Scott’s personal culpability and, more recently, the culpability of certain expedition members, remains controversial. Mount Terra Nova, on Ross Island, lays halfway between Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, that were named after two British Royal Navy’s bomb ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and that had been refitted for exploration, and become entangled on March the 13th 1842 in an Antarctic storm. At the time, the British and Americans were racing to chart the Antarctic coastlines. According to official accounts, this collision between HMS Erebus and HMS Terror is said to have occurred amid a storm when an iceberg became suddenly visible, causing HMS Erebus to take immediate evasive action by altering course into the path of HMS Terror. HMS Erebus was commanded by Captain James Clark Ross.Therefore, there appears to be psychotic humour encoded in the Erebus Crash event.
The charged potency of the Erebus Crash heightens when the historical reference to the Antarctic Flights’ start date, is recalled. The first of the Antarctica Flights marketed by Air New Zealand took place on 15 February 1977. Since the day, 15 February in 1882, became a date of national pride for the launch of the world’s first exported frozen meat shipment by sea, it would appear the inaugural Air New Zealand TE901 flight takes on a new spookiness. While the first frozen meat shipment was en route from Port Chalmers to Britain, the Dunedin’s Captain almost froze to death in the ship’s hold while sawing extra holes to improve air circulation, because the vessel was becalmed in the sunny banana tropics. The timing of the first Antarctic Flight to coincide with the historic date of the world’s first frozen meat shipment that departed port on 15 February 1882, may go along way to explaining why planning for these flights was rushed, as Royal Commissioner Justice Peter Mahon noticed.
In effect, the wreckage on Mount Erebus served an eerie talisman function to the Western Élites attuned to such symbol sorcery, to move bureaucratic mountains for the forging of a global super economy, or more mountains could be moved in front of flight crews — any time. Thus, the event of the first Antarctica Flight that took place on 15 February 1977, just happened to correspond with the historical portentious warning of the Soothsayer, whose words were not heeded by Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.
In the play, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare has the soothsayer character warn Caesar to “Beware the ides of March”. More precisely, the Soothsayer warned Caesar a month earlier to beware a 30-day period ending in the Ides of March, that is, the times from February 15 to March 15, as Barry Strauss reported in “Julius Caesar’s Forgotten Assassin”. It is apparent the Ides warning telegraphs danger from 15 February.
In Greek mythology, Erebus was the son of Chaos, the personification of darkness, and the name given to the caverns on the way to Hades, or Hell. A sinister signal?
Recall that Muldoon secretly authorized the establishment of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), first informally on March 15, and then formally but secretly on September 1? The date September 1 was potent since a military alliance between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, or the ANZUS Treaty, was signed on September 1st 1951. The treaty provided for common defence, including armed attack on any partnering nation’s metropolitan territories.
And on 15 February 1955, the New Zealand Combined Signals Organisation (NZCSO) was established, which formalised the New Zealand arm of the UKUSA network. The NZCSO was responsible for all N.Z. signals intelligence until the GCSB took over.
Therefore, there appears to be symbol sorcery encoded into the doomed flight, TE-901. Since the first frozen meat shipment left New Zealand on 15 February 1882, it could be said that the first Air New Zealand ‘live stock flight’ to Antarctica occurred in 1977. And therefore, it follows — by the same dark brutal logic — that the first Air New Zealand Antarctic ‘frozen meat flight’ took place on 28 November 1979.
The ‘Erebus Disaster’ toll beat New Zealand’s previous ‘darkest day — the 1931 Napier Earthquake — by one death. Erebus Commissioner Peter Mahon suspected criminals wanted the DC-10 to crash. It seems the crash was a ritual display of techno-prowess.
In effect, the airline had moved a mountain in front of the flight crew. The encoded metaphor suggests a coup d’état designed to threaten the Establishment’s insiders to move bureaucratic mountains for the envisioned trans-corporate heist of the ‘banana republic’ — or more mountains would be moved in front of flight crews at any time.
Ergo, it would appear that the Erebus Crash was an exhibition of spectacular power to effect an enduring severance between the visible public state and the deep state’s invisible national security complex. The effect seems to have been that the course of New Zealand’s political trajectory was jolted by this catalytic event.
As a modus operandi, such historical riffing signals authorship, cooperation, caution and to telegraph objectives. The signals suggest players are communicating their cooperation to take a plot ‘live’, convey hidden objectives and to broadcast psychotic humour, thereby posting themselves like hostages — as applied game theory predicts.
Thus, my key finding is that the Erebus Crash was thematically encoded with navigational, tragedy and quest metaphors codified into the historical riffs to signal cooperation, caution and a crisis cover-up — while telegraphing a spooky objective.
It appears that a foreign intelligence agency penetrated the state bureaucracy, and had free rein to inflict an air terrorism takedown with impunity, to politically capture key insiders of the Muldoon Government, Air New Zealand, the Establishment and the National Security State by embroiling them in a cover-up of a horrendous, epic crime.
For a detailed ‘second look’, see: “Terror Archipelago Down Under? Pt 2 Into the Erebus Abyss — Air New Zealand Flight TE901 Rabbit Hole Redux”
* Each of the examined crises are entwined either by dates, institutions and players, or by references to prior events, either domestic or international, that indicate NZ’s national security state is more interested in accumulating power than fully disclosing the truth of such events. Patterns emerge such as training exercises ‘going live’, institutional transitions impairing emergency responders, and an apparent ‘too stupid to be stupid’ modus operandi that is repeatedly passed off as bureaucratic blunders, corporate clownery or government grandeur. Yet, hidden hands are detectable. The broad range of crises points to a well-resourced criminal network that functions with hierarchical structures and with deep penetration in New Zealand institutions, to command an operational level army of ‘soldiers’ to implement the complex plots.
See also: “Terror Archipelago Down Under? Pt 1 Industrial Sabotage, Ritual Terrorism, and Police State Formation in New Zealand” on Snoopman News
SEE: Darkest Days by Dates Down Under series introduction
Back when Steve Snoopman was ‘Snoopboy’, he delivered the Auckland Star during the dark days of the Reagan White House. He forged his superpower to ‘Thunk Evil Without Being Evil’ while writing a thesis on the Global Financial Crisis. Upon quipping that Batman had failed to bust any Gotham banker balls — since his ass is owned by DC Comics — he consequently realised New Zealand needed a Snoopman.
Editor’s Note: If we have made any errors, please contact Steve ‘Snoopman’ Edwards with your counter-evidence. e: steveedwards108[at]protonmail.com
Steve Snoopman also posts on Snoopman News [at] https://snoopman.net.nz/