September 1st, 1983, was a tense day for the Soviet regime.
A military experiment was about to begin in USSR territory.
The army was conducting ground, air, and sea operations to ensure its total secrecy.
Everything seemed on track along the Soviet border when a mysterious
foreign aircraft was spotted near Sakhalin Island, north of Japan.
After futile attempts to establish contact with the unknown aircraft,
Maj, Gennadiy Osipovich, aboard his SU-15 fighter, was assigned to take it down.
Recent reports of US recon planes scouting the zone put the USSR
under alarm. It was not about to allow the secret military project to be compromised.
When Major. Gennadiy Osipovich approached the unidentified aircraft to fire warning shots,
no response came from the plane.
Instead, it suddenly began to climb, slowing its speed, as if it wanted to avoid contact and flee.
After a moment of hesitation, fearing that the enemy airplane would escape with valuable intel,
Maj. Osipovich was given permission to open fire and take it down no matter the cost.
With an audacious maneuver, he fired two AA-3 air-to-air missiles. One of them exploded behind
the target, damaging a crucial control line. The second one hit the aircraft in the fuselage.
Maj. Osipovich radioed Command that the enemy recon plane was destroyed,
and he safely returned to base. The sky was clear, and the USSR's secrets were safe.
But to Major. Osipovich's disgrace, neither he nor the Russian Command knew that they had just
taken down a civilian aircraft carrying more than 250 innocent people inside.
The consequences of this action would put the world on the brink of nuclear war once again.
The Russians would claim it was a set-up and a deliberate political provocation,
while the US would condemn it as a cruel act of barbarism.
Intelligence gathered later demonstrated more
to the story than a simple unidentified aircraft flying across Russian territory…
The Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Incident would be considered one
of the final denouements of Cold War fear before the USSR finally crumbled in 1991…
Off-Course
On an August night in 1983, at JFK airport in New York, 269 passengers and crew, including
62 Americans, said goodbye to their families before boarding Korean Air Lines Flight 007
for Seoul, South Korea. A US congressman, Republican Larry McDonald, was also onboard.
After taking off from New York, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet stopped at Anchorage for a refuel on
August 31st, 1983. At 4 AM, the aircraft took off full of passengers, crew, cargo, and fuel.
At 1,000 feet, KAL 007 turned to the left and began its flight heading to the west.
To reach Seoul safely, KAL 007 received precise air-traffic-control instruction.
The airplane was to fly directly to the Bethel navigational waypoint
and follow the transoceanic track R-20. They set the autopilot accordingly.
For the first minutes of the flight,
the aircraft made its way across the sea according to the instructions. However,
as time passed, KAL 007 started to deviate slightly to the north of its planned route.
With every mile passed, the airplane's real-time location
and the intended course to Seoul deviated further.
When KAL 007 reached the oceanic waypoint Nabie at about 200 miles off the Alaskan coast,
the flight was already 100 miles off track.
For the captain and the rest of the crew, everything seemed normal.
Yet, KAL 007 slowly began to make its way through Siberia, not Seoul.
An hour later into the flight, the airplane entered airspace heavily monitored by the USSR.
Coincidence or not, a USAF Boeing RC-135
happened to be in the same area observing Soviet military activities.
The Soviets were conducting a top-secret missile test at the Kura Missile Test Range.
The Boeing RC-135 was the military model of the civilian Boeing 707.
From a distance, both aircraft looked similar, except the RC-135 was equipped with listening
devices and equipment explicitly tailored for reconnaissance missions.
When KAL 007 entered the zone, the USAF Boeing RC-135 was flying in wide circles in the Kamchatka
Peninsula, where the USSR had installed military radars to track any activities in the Bering Sea.
The USAF flight was continually coming in and out of Soviet radar range
to track its communications and monitor them. During one of these maneuvers, KAL 007 entered
the Soviet radar range zone while the USAF's recon plane was coming out.
From this moment on, KAL 007 began to be tracked and hunted by Soviet radar operators.
They erroneously believed that the aircraft was
the US Air Force Boeing 707 they had been monitoring for several hours.
Soviet Air Response
For the crew and passengers aboard KAL 007, the flight was running smoothly.
They were on schedule, and, as far as they knew, they were on course.
It was night outside, and although the sky was clear, everything was dark below them.
Two hours into the flight, the passengers were awakened by a crew member who told them over the
intercom that they would arrive on time to Seoul. His last words were (QUOTE): "Before landing,
we will be serving beverages and breakfast, thank you."
But there would be no landing.
In the meantime, the USSR dispatched 4 Mig-23 fighters to intercept KAL 007.
The Soviet aircraft initiated a pursuit through the region that ended without contact.
They had to return to base for refueling.
Miraculously, KAL 007 made its way to the Sea of Okhotsk.
They stayed relatively safe in these international waters until it headed
again into Soviet territory near Sakhalin Island, a 500-mile long archipelago at the north of Japan.
KAL 007 had now deviated from its destination by more than 200 miles. Russian officials from the
Dolinsk-Sokol airbase dispatched two Sukhoi Su-15 fighter jets to contact the unidentified aircraft.
Col. Gennadi Osipovitch was one of the 2 Soviet pilots.
Recalling what happened that day, he told CNN in 1998 that when he approached KAL 007 (QUOTE):
"I could see two rows of windows, which were lit up. I wondered if it was a civilian aircraft.
Military cargo planes don't have such windows."
He doubted if it was the USAF's recon plane, but (QUOTE):
"I wondered what kind of plane it was, but I had no time to think,
I had a job to do. I started to signal the captain in international code.
I informed him that he had violated our airspace. He did not respond."
The other Soviet pilot, Lt. Gen. Valentin Varennikov and him, fired warning shots
with lit tracers. Still, the crew from KAL 007 ignored the message or did not see them.
Osipovitch thought that was strange. They did not respond to any of the two warnings.
He tried to make radio contact with the aircraft, but no one answered.
It was their third and last opportunity to respond, and they refused to do so.
Suddenly, KAL 007 began to ascend. According to the conversation the
crew had with Tokyo Area Control Center, the move was apparently for fuel purposes.
However, the two soviet pilots behind the aircraft took this as an act of defiance.
Meanwhile, Russian Command debated if the plane was indeed an enemy or not.
Some officers wished to wait until the airplane was adequately identified,
but others urged Command to take it down immediately.
They believed the plane could not be civilian because it purposely flew over Russian aerospace
on repeated occasions and failed to respond to warning shots. It could only be a spy plane.
Seconds later, Command took a desperate decision and radioed Osipovitch ordering him to (QUOTE):
"Destroy the intruder."
And Osipovitch did so without hesitation.
He fired 2 air-to-air missiles before KAL 007 made it into international airspace again.
Osipovitch would conclude his interview with CNN saying (QUOTE):
"My orders were to destroy the intruder. I fulfilled my mission."
KAL 007 was able to fly for 15 minutes after it was hit by the Soviet aircraft.
The airplane crashed in the sea, near Moneron Island, west of Sakhalin.
Soviet Denial and Russian Revelations
When the news reached the US, President Raegan called the attack (QUOTE): "A savagery,
an act worthy of barbarians, and a crime against humanity."
On September 5th, President Reagan addressed the country
and played an intercepted audiotape of Osipovich's discussions with Russian officials,
including a portion where Osipovich mentioned the airplane's blinking light.
According to an article by Thom Patterson, and published by CNN, Raegan said, (QUOTE):
"A Boeing 747 airliner is a distinctive shape. It looks nothing like a US military spy plane.
There is no way a pilot could mistake this for anything other than a civilian airliner."
The Soviets refused to acknowledge shooting down the aircraft until September 6th.
Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov accused the US of a political setup (QUOTE): "a sophisticated
provocation masterminded by the US special services with the use of a South Korean plane."
Soviet interference continued during the search and recovery efforts,
as naval forces harassed the international mission to find the crash site.
No passengers were recovered in the first days after the incident,
and to many, it seemed like the Soviets were eager to keep it that way.
It was not until wreckage began washing up in Japan eight-days later that the
Soviet conspiracy theories began falling apart.
After the USSR's fall, Boris Yeltsin, Russia's new president,
released Kremlin documents related to KAL 007 in 1992.
He provided the airplane's black boxes that Russian officials recovered from the crash,
giving the public more knowledge about what truly happened.
Despite the Soviet fighter pilot reports, there was little to confirm that the Soviets
actually tried to contact KAL 007 or that they even fired warning shots.
Intercepted radio traffic also seemed to suggest that the Soviet fighters were
instructed to shoot the plane down even if it was over neutral waters.
Regarding the strange and erroneous flight route, studies conducted later by the
International Civil Aviation Organization concluded that it was an autopilot error.
Although the crew was experienced, when they set the autopilot mode,
it was probably in heading mode. According to Author Asaf Degani, a former NASA expert,
such a setting prompted the plane to (QUOTE): "Follow a course according
to the magnetic compass, which can vary in accuracy up to 15 degrees at high latitudes."
A Soviet defector also provided information outlining many embarrassing command and control
errors that likely led to the botched Soviet response to the civilian airliner incursion.
A major Soviet radar installation had been out of service for several days,
allowing KAL 007 to reach Soviet airspace without being noticed earlier. The initial pursuit's
failure ratcheted-up pressure on the second Soviet pilots dispatched to identify the plane.
Later interviews suggest that the pilots did believe KAL 007 could have been civilian
and even saw its windows. They did not communicate this to the ground controllers.
A 1993 Russian report eventually revealed that KAL 007 was likely shot down in international airspace
before it crashed in Soviet territorial waters.