Margaret Thatcher, the indomitable Iron Lady, survived a secret missile attack on her official aircraft during a diplomatic mission to Africa in 1989, newly declassified documents have revealed.
The then-Prime Minister's RAF Vickers VC-10 was targeted by several powerful surface-to-air missiles while flying over war-torn Mozambique. The Foreign Office kept the alarming incident under wraps for decades, fearing it would damage international relations.
The Flight Under Fire
The dramatic event occurred on the evening of 30 March 1989. Lady Thatcher was en route from Zimbabwe to Malawi as part of a six-day trip aimed at helping to end apartheid in South Africa and secure Nelson Mandela's release.
Her aircraft was traversing Mozambican airspace, a region then engulfed in a savage civil war between the ruling Marxist FRELIMO party and the right-wing RENAMO guerrilla movement. It was here that the plane came under what has been described as a 'massive missile bombardment'.
Miraculously, all projectiles missed their mark. The VC-10 proceeded to land safely at Blantyre airport in Malawi. With characteristic stoicism, Thatcher downplayed the event in her autobiography, The Downing Street Years, mentioning it only in a single line.
A Diplomatic Cover-Up
Behind the scenes, however, British officials were furious. Secret files show that Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe demanded answers from Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, who promised a full investigation.
For months, the Mozambican authorities stalled. The British ambassador to Mozambique, James Allan, pressed President Chissano for results in June, but was met with evasion. By September, Foreign Office mandarin Charles Cullimore noted it was 'more than time that we returned to the charge'.
Yet, the diplomatic priority was to avoid a major scandal. The Foreign Office was anxious to downplay the matter, with instructions to consider it closed if the Mozambicans simply confirmed an incident had occurred.
The Drunken Commander Admission
It was not until November 1989 – eight months after the attack – that Mozambique privately admitted fault to the British government. Their explanation laid blame on a 'drunk FRELIMO air battery commander' who had accidentally fired upon the prime ministerial jet.
This account, later corroborated by Thatcher's official biographer Charles Moore, was accepted by Whitehall. The Foreign Office chose not to release any details publicly, and the official Mozambican report on the incident remains classified until 2030.
This episode stands as a startling postscript to Thatcher's famous defiance following the IRA's Brighton bomb in 1984, revealing another brush with mortality that was swiftly buried by the machinery of state diplomacy.
