This is the last track to finally unravel the mystery of the crash of a Caravelle connecting Ajaccio to Nice, on September 11, 1968: a collision with a missile… A military “blunder”? It was established that around 10:30 a.m., as it began its descent, the plane passed an area where a warship was located. It’s about Suffren, a 158-meter-long frigate equipped to fire anti-submarine torpedoes and Masurca missiles. Could this strategic building for the French Navy have fired a missile that would have struck the Caravelle?
New testimony contradicts army version
The army has always maintained that on September 11, 1968, the Suffren had remained at the quay in Toulon, with her crew of nearly 350 men. Is it so sure? For this investigation to see in “Sensitive Affairs” on April 18, 2022, the journalists found a key witness who, although a judicial investigation has been underway since 2014, has never been heard. Jean-François de Saint-Périer embarked in May 1968 as a conscript. On September 11, he was in the hold, at anti-submarine control. And his memories differ radically from the version of the army…
“I confirm: we weren’t at the dock that day. We had been at sea for at least a week. We fired a missile before the crash! We fired it at that time! That, I can be categorical: I was there. I was there, and I heard him leave.”
Jean-François de Saint-Périer, former sailor on the “Suffren”in “Sensitive Matters”
The former sailor claims that “a quarter of an hour, ten minutes later, we [leur] said: ‘We are going to the scene, because there is a Caravelle which has crashed. You have to go to the scene because you have to possibly recover survivors, or debris…“
A page torn from the logbook of the frigate “Suffren”
Another disturbing element: the frigate’s logbook, a document which is not classified as a Defense secret. The journalist Tristan Waleckx found it in the archives of Toulon in 2008 and was surprised to find that on the date of September 11, half of the page is missing… Why would it have been torn out? According to the explanation provided to Mathieu Paoli, the president of the association which brings together the families of the victims, coffee would have spilled on it…
If such elements have been able, over the years, to comfort the families who believe in a military “blunder”, the mystery remains however on the reasons for which the plane was damaged a few minutes from landing, with 95 people on board…
Extract from “Caravelle Ajaccio-Nice: a secret Defense crash?”, a document to see on April 18, 2022 in “Sensitive Affairs”, a magazine presented by Fabrice Drouelle and co-produced by France Télévisions, France Inter and INA according to the original France Inter broadcast.
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