Mystery Plane Shot Down After Leaving Nicaragua : Hondurans Say C-47 Had No ID

Honduran air force jets shot down an unidentified plane after it entered Honduran airspace from Nicaragua and flew over Tegucigalpa ignoring all calls to identify itself, the military said today.

In Washington, the Pentagon said no U.S. military aircraft were operating in the area. Reagan Administration sources suggested that the plane might have been flying a drug-smuggling mission.

The Honduran military statement issued today did not say how many people were aboard the plane or if they survived.

The statement said the plane, which Washington sources identified as a C-47, was shot down at 11:30 p.m. Monday near Cucuyagua in Copan province, about 90 miles west of Tegucigalpa.

Combat Planes Deployed

“The detection of the aircraft caused the reaction of our air force, which immediately deployed combat planes,” the military statement said.

“The crew of the plane did not identify itself. Because of that, with all peaceful procedures exhausted, the air force carried out warning shots and then shot down the plane,” it said.

Col. Manuel Suarez, director of the armed forces’ public relations office, said the plane entered Honduran territory from the southeast, passing over El Paraiso province bordering Nicaragua and over an area south of Tegucigalpa.

El Paraiso province serves as the base for the largest U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebel army. Copan province, where the plane was shot down, borders Guatemala.

Nationality Not Confirmed

Foreign Ministry spokesman Eugenio Castro said officials still could not confirm the nationality of the downed plane at midday, more than 12 hours after the crash.

Tensions have been high along the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. U.S.-supported contra rebels fighting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government maintain clandestine camps in southern Honduras.

The airspace in the Nicaraguan-Honduran border area is shared by Nicaraguan rebel suppliers and U.S. reconnaissance craft flying secret intelligence missions.

Both types of missions often cross the border.

In Managua, Nicaragua, an official at the headquarters of the Sandinista air force said: “None of our planes has been shot down.”

‘It Is Not Ours’

The Nicaraguan ambassador to Honduras, Danilo Abud Vivas, said, “It is not ours. We do not even have that type of plane in our air force. And our planes fly with complete, clear identification. Even the Honduran military did not say it was ours.”

In Washington, Pentagon sources said the Honduran government had notified the United States “that they downed a plane.”

“But the information is very fragmentary,” said one source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s not one of ours, and there’s no indication it was a plane operating in support of the contras.”

“The report is that they shot the plane down when it violated Honduran airspace and failed to identify itself,” added another official. “That’s all we know.”

“It supposedly was monitored coming out of Nicaragua,” added another source, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

No U.S. Planes Involved

Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims said he was not familiar with the report. But he added, “The U.S., to our knowledge, had no planes, no military planes, involved in any shoot-down or crash.”

The Washington sources identified the downed plane as a C-47, the military version of the old DC-3 twin-engine prop airliner.

One source in Washington said it would not be unusual for such an aircraft to be used by drug runners. “We have our suspicions that this might have involved a drug operation,” the source said.