In one of the most bizarre and visually shocking moments in the history of air piracy, an FBI agent was forced to strip down to his swimming trunks and walk onto the tarmac carrying a briefcase stuffed with a $1 million ransom to meet the demands of a group of hijackers.
The unprecedented event took place during the dramatic standoff of Delta Air Lines Flight 841 in the summer of 1972, after the aircraft, hijacked by members of the Black Liberation Army, landed at Miami International Airport.
Delta Flight 841, originally en route from Detroit to Miami, was seized by five individuals who commandeered the Douglas DC-8. After the release of most of the 94 passengers in Miami, the hijackers, who were seeking safe passage to Algeria, issued a series of demands that included $1 million in cash, various provisions—and a remarkable instruction to the law enforcement agents delivering the money.
The hijackers, fearing a hidden weapon or tracking device, explicitly demanded that the agents making the exchange be stripped down.
The iconic image captured the moment a man—identified in some accounts as a Delta airport maintenance foreman named Ronald S. Fudge who was working directly with the FBI—braved the July heat in just his swimwear, clutching a heavy suitcase believed to contain the cash. The move was a stark illustration of the extraordinary lengths U.S. authorities would go to in the 1970s “golden age” of skyjacking to secure the release of hostages.
Once the massive ransom—the largest ever paid for an airplane hijacking at the time—was delivered, along with food and an international navigator (who was also reportedly required to strip to his briefs), the aircraft departed Miami.
The hijackers successfully forced the crew to fly the DC-8 across the Atlantic to Algeria, a country that had previously offered asylum to members of radical groups. While Algerian authorities seized the plane and returned the crew and the $1 million ransom to the United States, the hijackers were initially released after a few days.
Though the hijackers temporarily evaded capture, the case remained open for years.
- 1976: Four of the five hijackers were eventually tracked down and arrested in Paris, France. They were later tried and convicted in French courts.
- 2011: The final hijacker, George Wright, who had been an accomplice in an earlier armed robbery and homicide and had escaped from a New Jersey prison, was finally arrested in Portugal after 41 years on the run.
The peculiar sight of a man in tight-fitting trunks delivering a million-dollar ransom remains a vivid, if embarrassing, snapshot of a tumultuous era when air travel security was minimal and the FBI was routinely forced into unconventional negotiations to end a surge of hijackings.