Missile Reportedly Downed Airliner in 1980

MILAN, Italy — Experts have concluded that an Italian jetliner that mysteriously crashed into a sea eight years ago, killing all 81 people on board, was shot down by a missile, a newspaper reported.

British and American experts have been analyzing the recently salvaged wreckage of the DC-9, which exploded and crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea on June 27, 1980.

The Italian government financed a salvage operation to raise the fuselage so that experts could determine the cause of the disaster.

The Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera said that British explosives experts and American engineers at McDonnell Douglas, the jetliner’s manufacturer, have determined the plane was downed by a missile.

The paper said the missile exploded seconds before it would have struck the jetliner. It said the blast destroyed the cockpit, killed the flight crew, damaged the baggage compartment door on the right, scorched the outside of the plane and punched three grapefruit-size holes in the fuselage.

It did not say who might have fired the missile or why.