UTA Flight 772 Memorial (Desert Week 2)
Welcome to the second annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week!
Even by Saharan standards, the Ténéré region of northern Niger is pretty desolate: a vast sea of sand, broken only by the occasional rocky outcrop, where barely an inch of rain falls each year. So it’s something of a surprise to see a huge picture of a DC-10 among the dunes.
The story behind this striking image is a tragic one: it is a memorial to UTA Flight 772, which was blown up by a suitcase bomb in the skies above this spot in 1989, killing 170 people1. An investigation concluded that Libyan terrorists were to blame for the explosion, which occurred 46 minutes after the aircraft took off from N’Djamena International Airport in Chad, en route to Paris. (The flight had originated from Brazzaville, the capital city of Congo.)
The memorial was created in 2007, to mark the 18th anniversary of the disaster, by Les Familles de l’Attentat du DC-10 d’UTA, an association of the victims’ families. Financed by a compensation fund paid to the victims by the Libyan government, it was constructed by 100 people working largely by hand under the desert sun.
The life-size silhouette of the aircraft lies inside a circle more than 200ft in diameter, created using dark stones set into the sand. Surrounding this circle are 170 broken mirrors, representing those who died, and arrows marking the points of the compass. At the northern point, part of the right wing of the DC-10 has been erected as a monument, with a plaque commemorating the victims.
The association’s website (in French) includes a moving video of the crash site – still littered with perfectly preserved debris – and numerous photographs of the construction of the memorial. (These are large PDF files, but are well worth downloading as they give an idea of the stark beauty of the region as well as the impressive size of the memorial.)
Thanks to Tom Van Steen.
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Union des Transports Aériens merged with Air France in 1990. Until the recent Air France disaster, the Flight 772 bombing was the deadliest incident in French aviation history. ↩
Thank you to hightlight this spot.
I lost my father in thhis plane bombing, I became lateron the leader of the familes group and negociated with Libya… but the task I am the more proud of is this Memorial in the middle of the desert. It took us more than one moth to build it, with more than 100 person on the spot. We made also a documentary about this human adventure, for the families who would not have the opertunity (or the health) to go there. It’s so fantastic to see it on Google earth! You shall find many pictures on our website, and can buy the DVD … in french. All the best,
Guillaume de Saint Marc
Thanks for your comment, Guillaume, and I am sure all the readers of Google Sightseeing would join me in offering our sympathy for the loss of your father. The memorial is a beautiful piece of work; it is a shame it had to come out of such a tragedy.
Congratulations, Guillaume, and thanks to Google Sightseeing for including this memorial to the indescribable horror of international terrorism. May all those who view this sight and see the memorial spend a moment and think prayerfully about all those innocents whose lives were violently taken from them, and from their families. Our desire and purpose must be to rid the world of terrorism in all its forms.
Wow, this is a very beautiful thing and I found the pictures fascinating. I’m sure you are pleased how good the memorial looks in the satellite images now made available for everyone to see.
I wanted this Memorial to be visible from planes or satellite, the result is far over our expectations! It’s very emotional for me and the other families
Am i right in thinking that the rocks were gathered from round about – or were they shipped in?
Either way it is a great achievement but like Rob says its such a shame it had to be built at all.
The rocks come from the mountains you see at the West of the site : 70 km of sand. Difficult to transport, even with the trucks we had. And very difficult work for the person in charge of collecting the stones in a very hot spot, with no shade … pictures to see on the website http://www.dc10-uta.org “photos”
There’s actually more to see in this part of Niger. The world-famous Arbre du Ténéré was located there! It used to be the most remote tree in the world, until a drunk truck driver (also Libyan, by the way) ran into it….
I had returned to Chad where I was working on that plane. We lost 3 friends/co-workers on the flight when it went down. It still brings back the feeling of dread that we had when we heard the news. Thanks for the article and the link to display in Google Earth.