Video: 'Johan Grimonprez : dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y part 05'

(Saturday, September 12, 1970, 3:30 p.m. Eastern European Time; during the Dawson’s Field hijackings) — Members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) blew up three hijacked planes valued at $20 million today at an airfield in the Jordanian desert after freeing the hostages held aboard under a death threat.

Sixty persons were kept aboard the dynamite-laden planes until minutes before the explosions destroyed the grounded jets.