The Dawson's Field hijacking

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2020

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Barbara Mensch recalls how she was hijacked and held in Jordan by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in September 1970. Barbara’s plane was forced to fly to a disused British airbase in Jordan, whilst on the final leg of a flight from Tel Aviv to New York. She was imprisoned on board the TWA plane for almost a week and then held hostage in the Jordanian capital Amman for a further fortnight, as the so called Black September conflict erupted between militant Palestinian groups and the Jordanian Army.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
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0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds
0:30.9	You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Bob Howard.
0:40.0	Today I'm bringing you the story of Barbara Mench, who at the age of 16 found herself at the center of one of the most extraordinary hostage takings in aviation history. The Dorsons Field hijackings, which precipitated the start of Black September,
0:56.0	the struggle between Palestinian militants and the Jordanian army.
1:00.0	The hijackers said to the Jordanian army that if you shoot us or prevent us from leaving,
1:09.0	we're going to shoot all of the passengers.
1:12.3	That was one of the moments where I really was petrified.
1:16.0	September 1970 and tensions were rising between King Hussein of Jordan and
1:20.8	Palestinian militant groups. They'd base themselves in the kingdom following
1:25.8	the 1967 war with Israel. They'd then launch military operations across the border, which
1:32.3	had drawn Israeli reprisals that had killed
1:35.1	Jordanians. Unaware of all this Barbara Mench was about to return home to her
1:40.4	family in New York after spending the summer on a kibbutz in Israel with two friends, Nancy and Anne.
1:47.0	The plane after departing from Tel Aviv went to Athens and then went on to Frankfurt.
1:55.0	Everything went smoothly until the plane took off from Germany.
	...

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