Korean Air Flight 007 (KAL007, KE007) was the flight number of a civilian airliner shot down by Soviet fighters on September 1, 1983, over Soviet territorial waters just west of Sakhalin island, killing all 269 passengers and crew.
The USSR said it was justified in shooting down the aircraft and that they did not know whether it was military or civilian. The shoot-down attracted a storm of protest in the United States and from many people in Europe.
Chronology
Korean Air Lines KE007 was a commercial Boeing 747 (registration: HL7442) flying from New York to Seoul's at-the-time main international airport in Gimpo, South Korea. It took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on August 31 carrying 246 passengers and 23 crew. After refueling at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska the aircraft took off, flying southwards for Seoul-Kimpo International Airport (now Gimpo Airport) but at a course (245 degrees) that would take the craft much further westward than usual, cutting across the Kamchatka Peninsula and then over the Sea of Okhotsk towards Sakhalin.
The pilots apparently did not notice that they were 500 kilometers off course and violating Soviet airspace. KAL had violated Soviet airspace before, in April 1978 a Korean Airlines Boeing 707 had flown over Murmansk and crash landed on a frozen lake after the Soviets tried to shoot it down, killing two passengers.
It is generally believed that the airliner was mistaken for a USAF (United States Air Force) RC-135 that was flying a routine electronic intelligence mission northeast of Kamchatka at about the same time. The primary long-range radar systems were not operational at the time, so as the RC-135 flew on its "racetrack" course it would appear on the inbound leg, turn around, and then disappear again. This pattern repeated several times, until, in what appears to be a terrible coincidence, Flight 007 flew inbound on a track very close to the RC-135's inbound leg at roughly the time the plane should have re-appeared on their radars. This time the radar contact did not turn outbound again, giving the Soviet forces a rare opportunity to intercept one of these annoying spy planes. Nor would this be the first time: the US routinely conducted Burning Wind SIGINT/COMINT flights to test the USSRs air defense systems, and lost several planes on such missions.
As the aircraft approached and overflew Soviet territory, Su-15 and MiG-23 fighters were scrambled. Two Sukhoi Su-15s from Dolinsk-Sokol airbase intercepted and shot down the airliner with a single missile attack at 18.26 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The airliner crashed into the sea about 55 km off Moneron Island killing all on board. Initial reports that the airliner had been forced to land on Sakhalin were soon proved false. CVR (cockpit voice recorder) transcripts recovered from the airliner show the crew undertaking an emergency spiral descent due to rapid decompression from 18.26 until the end of the recording at 18.27:46.
An International Civil Aviation Organization investigation concluded that the course taken was accidental: a result of the autopilot being either left in heading mode or having been switched to INS when outside of the range for the INS to capture the correct track. This left the airliner proceeding on the constant magnetic heading chosen when the craft left Anchorage. The crew did not notice this error or undertake the correct INS checks to discover it later due to a "lack of situational awareness and flight deck co-ordination".
Due to the lack of witnesses it is difficult to know whether international standards for interception were followed. Those involved on the Soviet side maintain that they made radio calls and fired warning shots, but KAL 007 did not reply.
Public outcry
Ronald Reagan condemned the shooting down on September 5, calling it the "Korean airline massacre", a "crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten" and an "act of barbarism... [of] inhuman brutality". The next day, the Soviet Union admitted to shooting down KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace. The attack pushed relations between the United States of America and the Soviet Union to a new low.
The Reagan administration successfully turned the incident into a propaganda coup. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, made an audio-visual presentation in the Security Council using heavily edited tapes of the Soviet radio conversations and a map of the plane's intended -- but not actual -- flight path to depict the shoot-down as a vicious assassination.
The Ballad of Flight 007
Within days of the shoot-down of Flight 007 a stirring ballad by songwriter Dr. Jerry Griffin, dedicated to the victims of the flight, was released within the United States. It was sent to all the major American television networks for free distribution, and was re-released in 2004 to an international audience.
Theories
As with any serious disaster a number of conspiracy theories have arisen. The theorists' main concerns are why the airliner was off course and even whether it crashed.
The most interesting 'off course' theory is that the flight was part of a deliberate US intelligence gathering effort. KAL was originally a CIA proprietary. USAF wanted to use a civilian plane as 'bait' to test the Soviet reaction to an incursion inside their borders. The flight took them over two Soviet military bases on the island of Sakhalin. 15 minutes behind KAL007 in international airspace was another civilian plane, KAL015, which relayed KAL007's messages to ground control. There are too many inconsistencies with normal procedure for this whole incident to have been accidental.
The theories claiming KAL-007 did not crash relate to a number of issues. It is claimed to be unlikely that a single missile would knock a 747 out of the air, as the loss of a single engine is not catastrophic for such a craft. Reports of the crash put the time from missile strike to sea impact at around twelve minutes, which is high for an uncontrolled descent. The crew, although they did not report a mayday, did announce that they were "noncontrol," or out of control, in two further communications from the 747.
The amount of material recovered from the accident compares unfavourably with other crashes of 747 aircraft as does the type of material retrieved. That only two bodies were recovered, relatively intact, is also surprisingly low. All searches, either by the Soviets, Japanese or Americans were ended in early November, 1983.
The 'no crash' theories do not attempt to explain why the plane was off-course, or why the Soviets would want to hold onto 260 or so airline passengers, except a claim that they were targeting a single passenger and felt it was necessary to keep all of the other people in captivity to conceal this. Nor do they explain how the flight recorders ended up in the ocean. In any case, none of the investigators involved has offered a synopsis of the event that has explained all of the known fact satisfactorily.
See also
External links
Last updated: 05-16-2005 08:29:53
