Which Constellation crashed in the Algerian Sahara due to a bomb in 1961?

Air France Flight 406 was a scheduled international service departing from Brazzaville, in the Congo, with final destination Marignane Airport and stopovers in Fort Lamy (Chad) and Marseille. On May 10, 1961, it was operated by the Lockheed L-1649 Starliner F-BHBM "De Grasse." The Starliner was the last civilian variant of the Constellation family, with an entirely new wing and the L-1049G fuselage.

After taking off from Fort Lamy, while flying at around 20,000 feet (6,100 m), the aircraft broke apart after its tail structure failed. It crashed about 35 miles (56 km) from the Edjele oil field, near the border with Libya, in what was then French Algeria. All nine crew members and 69 passengers died — 78 people in total, including eighteen children. It is the deadliest accident involving a Lockheed Starliner.

The most likely cause was sabotage using a nitrocellulose explosive. The motive was never established: no one was arrested and no one claimed responsibility for the attack. Among the victims were the wife and three young children of the United States chargé d'affaires in the Central African Republic, who were traveling to London, along with two members of the Central African government and a count and countess. The lack of culprits left the case unresolved. It was not the first Constellation brought down by an explosive: six years earlier, on April 11, 1955, Air India's Kashmir Princess, an L-749, had crashed off the Natuna Islands after a bomb exploded on board, killing 16 of its 19 occupants. Air France, for its part, had already lost another aircraft of the family in 1949: the L-749 of Flight 009, which crashed in the Azores with boxer Marcel Cerdan on board.