WINDHOEK (Reuter) - A Namibian ship helping to search for miss-
 ing U.S. and German military planes in the south Atlantic reported
 on Monday it had found some wreckage, port officials said.
    ``We were informed...they have found wreckage debris and half an
 aircraft seat with some German papers. Now they will be intensifying
 the search,'' Mogamat Saban, duty port controller at Walvis Bay
 port, told Reuters.
     The German military plane, a Soviet-built Tupolev TU-154, with
 24 passengers is presumed to have crashed while on a flight to South
 Africa.
     Officials believe it may have collided with the American cargo
 aircraft with a crew of nine that vanished in the same area at about
 the same time, German and U.S. officials said.
     Saban said two more Namibian vessels were on their way to the
 place where the wreckage had been spotted, about 140 nautical miles
 off the Namibian coast.
     He said Namibia's Sea Fisheries vessel, Tobias Hainyeko, which
 has been in the search area since Sunday night, had found the wreck-
 age at 8.35 a.m. local time (0635 GMT) on Monday.
     Two South African Air Force planes, a Boeing and a C-130, are
 also in the area hunting for survivors from the two planes which
 went missing on Saturday.
 04:35 09-15-97
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     LONDON (Sept. 14) -  The German defense ministry said on Sunday
 it believed one of its Tupolev 154 military transport planes had
 crashed en route to South Africa and did not expect any of the 24
 people aboard to have survived.
     Here is a chronology of some recent air disasters involving
 Russian-made Tupolev planes.
 -- Sept 3, 1997  - Sixty-four people were killed when a Tupolev
 Tu-134 belonging to Vietnam Airlines crashed while coming in to land
 at Phnom Penh airport in Cambodia.
 --  Feb 8, 1993  - An Iranian Tupolev chartered by Iran Air Tours
 crashed after a collision with a military Sukhoi plane. It had 119
 passengers and 13 crew on board. The pilot and co-pilot of the mili-
 tary plane were also killed, bringing the combined death toll to 134.
 --  Sept 21, 1993  - A Tu-134 plane was hit by heat-seeking missiles
 fired from a boat in the Black Sea off Sukhumi, killing at least 25
 people. Abkhazian rebels said they were not responsible.
 --  Sept 22, 1993  - A Tupolev 154 carrying Georgian troops from
 Tbilisi was shot down just as it was landing at Sukhumi. "Dozens"
 of people were killed. Abkhazian rebels said they were responsible.
 --  Jan 3, 1994  - All 124 people on board a Tupolev 154, including
 16 foreigners, were killed when it crashed near Mamony in Siberia.
 A farmer on the ground was also killed. The Baikal Air craft had
 reported one of its engines catching fire minutes after taking off
 from Irkutsk in Siberia on a flight to Moscow.
 --  June 6, 1994  - A China Northwest Airlines Tupolev 154 on a
 flight from Xian to Guangzhou crashed, killing all 146 passengers
 and 14 crew on board. This is the worst reported plane crash in
 China.
 --  June 24, 1995  - 15 people were killed when a Tu-134 of Harka
 Airlines crashed at Lagos airport in Nigeria. The aircraft, which
 had 80 people on board, overshot the runway in driving rain.
 --  Dec 7, 1995  - A Russian Aeroflot Tu-154 with 97 people on
 board disappeared from radar screens on a flight from Sakhalin
 Island to Khabarovsk. The wreckage was eventually found 11 days
 later about 30 miles inland.
 --  Aug 29, 1996  - A Tupolev 154, chartered by the Russian mining
 company Trust Arktik Ugol and carrying 129 passengers and a crew of
 12 to the remote Arctic island of Spitzbergen crashed, killing all
 aboard.
 10:45 09-14-97
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