{"id":2113,"date":"2005-05-17T00:45:48","date_gmt":"2005-05-17T07:45:48","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-05-17T00:45:48","modified_gmt":"2005-05-17T07:45:48","slug":"raf-hercules-downed-by-aa-fire-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/17\/raf-hercules-downed-by-aa-fire-in-iraq\/","title":{"rendered":"RAF Hercules downed by AA fire in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/portal.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2005\/05\/17\/wirq17.xml&#038;sSheet=\/news\/2005\/05\/17\/ixworld.html\">The Telegraph is reporting<\/a> that the RAF Hercules which crashed January 30, 2005 &#8211; the day of the Iraqi elections &#8211; was downed by an AA weapon.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An interim Ministry of Defence report has ruled out almost everything apart from enemy fire and it was suggested that a missile or rocket-propelled grenade could have brought down the aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>But an official told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that the report concluded that the Hercules had been shot down by anti-aircraft artillery, as it flew at a low altitude, possibly 150ft.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was shredded by a multi-barrelled 20mm canon,&#8221; the official said. &#8220;They have worked out that&#8217;s what caused the crash.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The gun is believed to have been a 1960s twin-barrel Zu-23, made in China or the Soviet Union, left over from the Saddam Hussein regime.<\/p>\n<p>It has an effective range of 2,000 yards and can be mounted on a lorry or set on wheels.<\/p>\n<p>It is not known why the Hercules, which was equipped with sophisticated defensive measures, was flying at low altitude for the 40-minute trip.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Telegraph is reporting that the RAF Hercules which crashed January 30, 2005 &#8211; the day of the Iraqi elections &#8211; was downed by an AA weapon. An interim Ministry of Defence report has ruled out almost everything apart from enemy fire and it was suggested that a missile or rocket-propelled grenade could have brought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}