On February 21, 1973, the Israeli Defense Force sent American-built F-4 Phantoms to shoot down a Boeing 727 operated by Libyan Arab Airlines. Flight 114 had taken off from Tripoli and was headed to Cairo when it got lost over Egypt due to weather and equipment malfunction.
Digging Deeper
The 2 Phantoms intercepted the jet liner over the Sinai desert after it had strayed there from the Suez Canal. The Sinai had been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. The failure of Egypt to shoot missiles at the plane, and the seeming approach toward a secret Israeli nuclear (bomb making?) facility exacerbated the situation, especially since Israel was in a virtual state of war with its Arab neighbors (and in a real war a few months later).
The intercepting F-4s fired warning shots from their 20mm cannons and attempted to get the jetliner to follow them to land at Rephidim Air Base. Interpreting the lack of response from the jetliner's crew as failure to comply, the fighter jets riddled the hapless plane with cannon fire, bringing it down in a crash. Only 5 of the 113 people aboard the ill-fated Boeing survived, among them the co-pilot.
