Under Fire

On Sunday, October 5, 1986, a C-123K cargo plane took off from Ilopango, El Salvador, and was flying low into Nicaraguan airspace, only 700 meters off the ground to elude Sandinista radar. José Fernando Canales and Byron Montiel, two young soldiers just five months into their mandatory service in the Sandinista military had set up a portable land-air rocket deep in the jungle of the Chontales Department. When they heard the engines of the unmarked cargo plane, José Fernando received the order to shoot. He aimed, fired, and within seconds the plane exploded in the air and fell to earth in pieces; only the tail section remained intact. Twenty-four hours later, the Sandinista mouthpiece La Voz de Nicaragua (The Voice of Nicaragua) broke into its regular programming with a special bulletin that a plane belonging to the “counterrevolution” had been hit by an “arrow,” and perhaps more important, that “North Americans” were among the crew. When Sandinista troops reached the crash site, they found 13,000 pounds of weaponry: 50,000 AK-47 rifle cartridges, 60 collapsible AK-47s, a similar number of RPG-7 grenade launchers, and 150 pairs of jungle boots.

The C-123K carried three Americans and one Nicaraguan. The pilot William Cooper, co-pilot Wallace Blaine Sawyer, and radio operator Freddy Vilches died in the crash. Eugene Hasenfus, in charge of dropping the cargo, had been able to see the incoming rocket in time and jumped from the plane with a parachute given to him by his brother before leaving the United States.

“Give up, gringo, or we'll blow you to hell!” reportedly shouted the pursuing soldier Rafael Antonio Acevedo, when he found Hasenfus in an abandoned hut, eating a squash and lying in a hammock he had made from his parachute. The American was armed with a pistol and a pocketknife, but immediately surrendered to the twenty-year-old Sandinista conscript. Days later Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humberto Ortega decorated the Sandinista soldiers involved with gold medals.