Korean Air Lines Flight 007

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Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Image:KAL007747-2.png

A computer rendering of HL7442, the KAL 747 lost during Flight 007

Summary
Date  September 1, 1983
Type  Airliner shoot down
Site  46°34′N 141°17′E / 46.567, 141.283 (KAL007)Coordinates: 46°34′N 141°17′E / 46.567, 141.283 (KAL007)
West of Sakhalin island
Origin  John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, New York
Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Last stopover  Anchorage International Airport, Anchorage, Alaska
Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Destination  Gimpo International Airport, Seoul
Image:Flag of South Korea.svg South Korea
Passengers  240
Crew  29
Fatalities  269
Survivors  0
Aircraft
 Aircraft type  Boeing 747-230B
Operator  Korean Air Lines
Tail number  HL7442

Korean Air Lines Flight 007, also known as KAL 007, was a Korean Air Lines civilian airliner shot down by Soviet jet interceptors on September 1, 1983 just west of Sakhalin island. 269 passengers and crew, including US congressman Lawrence McDonald, were aboard KAL 007; there were no survivors.

The Soviet Union stated it did not believe the aircraft was civilian and suggested it had entered Soviet airspace as a deliberate provocation by the United States, the purpose being to test its military response capabilities, repeating the provocation of Korean Air Flight 902, also shot down by Soviet aircraft over the Kola Peninsula in 1978. The incident attracted a storm of protest from across the world, particularly from the United States.

Contents

[edit] Flight information

Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was a commercial Boeing 747-230B (registration: HL7442, formerly D-ABYH[1], was previously operated by Condor Airlines.) flying from New York City, United States to Seoul, South Korea. The aircraft, piloted by Chun Byung-in [2], took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on August 31 carrying 240 passengers and 29 crew. After refueling at Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, the aircraft departed for Seoul at 13:00 GMT (3:00 AM local time) on September 1. KAL 007 flew westward and then turned south on a course for Seoul-Kimpo International Airport that took it much farther west than planned, cutting across the Soviet Kamchatka Peninsula and then over the Sea of Okhotsk towards Sakhalin, violating Soviet airspace more than once.

63 Americans died in the shootdown. [3] 23 of the passengers were children under 12 years of age. [4]

The flight attendants included fourteen women and two men. 12 passengers occupied the upper deck first class. Passengers occupied almost all of the 24 business class seats. In economy class almost 80 seats had no passengers. 130 passengers planned to connect to other destinations such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; they flew Korean Air Lines due to its fares. [5]

Of the people who boarded in New York, four people, including Robert Sears, his wife, and two children, left the aircraft in Anchorage; Sears had vacationed in New York with his family. [2]

[edit] Interception

Image:Su-15.png
The Sukhoi Su-15, NATO codename Flagon, was a Soviet interceptor.

Soviet air defense units had been tracking the aircraft for more than an hour while it entered and left Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula. Interceptor aircraft had initially tried to contact the pilot of KAL 007 by radio and by making visual contact. When this failed, the pilot of the lead aircraft reported firing 120 rounds of ammunition in four 30-round bursts from his cannon. The lack of tracers made them invisible to the 747, which continued on its course. An order to shoot down the airliner was given as it was about to leave Soviet airspace for the second time after flying over Sakhalin Island. It was probably downed in international airspace.[6] The lead aircraft of two Su-15 Flagon interceptors scrambled from Dolinsk-Sokol airbase fired two air to air missiles around 18:26 GMT,[7] and shot down KAL 007. The airliner crashed into the sea north of Moneron Island, killing all on board. Initial reports that the airliner had been forced to land on Sakhalin were soon proved false. Transcripts recovered from the airliner's cockpit voice recorder indicate that the crew were unaware that they were off course and violating Soviet airspace (at the end they were 500 kilometers west of the planned track). Just prior to being attacked, the 747 had been cruising at an altitude around 35,000 feet. When the missile exploded, KAL 007's tail was pushed downward which at the same time lifted its nose causing a brief altitude gain before it began to descend from 18:26 until recording ceased at 18:27:46. Capt. Chun was able to turn off the autopilot (18:26:46) and it is unknown whether he was able to regain any measure of control[8] as the aircraft spiraled toward the ocean around 5 miles (8 km) below after the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder stopped functioning.

[edit] Investigations

Image:KA Flight 007.gif
Map showing the divergence of planned and actual flightpaths

The International Civil Aviation Organization investigated the incident and concluded that the violation of Soviet airspace was accidental: The autopilot had been set to heading hold after departing Anchorage. It was determined that the crew did not notice this error or subsequently perform navigational checks that would have revealed that the aircraft was diverging further and further from its assigned route. This was later deemed to be caused by a "lack of situational awareness and flight deck coordination".[8]

According to a U.S. Department of State transcript of the shoot down reported by the New York Times,[9] the pilot who shot the plane, Gennady Osipovich, stated that he fired multiple bursts from his cannon prior to releasing the two missiles.[6] The pilot admitted there were no tracers, and these shots could not have been seen by the KAL 007 crew. The Soviets officially maintained that they had attempted radio contact with the airliner and that KAL 007 failed to reply. No other aircraft or ground monitors covering those emergency frequencies at the time reported hearing any such Soviet radio calls. The Soviet pilot reported that KAL 007 was flashing navigation lights, which should have suggested that the plane was civilian. In 1996, Osipovich indicated that he knew KAL 007 was a Boeing: "I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use."[10] The United States used RC-135s to spy on Russia, and, according to Osipovich, he feared that the plane could have been an RC-135. [4]

[edit] Aftermath

US President Ronald Reagan condemned the shoot down on September 5, 1983, calling it the "Korean airline massacre," a "crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten" and an "act of barbarism … [and] inhuman brutality."[6]

“ And make no mistake about it; this attack was not just against ourselves or the Republic of Korea. This was the Soviet Union against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere. It was an act of barbarism, born of a society which wantonly disregards individual rights and the value of human life and seeks constantly to expand and dominate other nations. They deny the deed, but in their conflicting and misleading protestations, the Soviets reveal that, yes, shooting down a plane—even one with hundreds of innocent men, women, children, and babies—is a part of their normal procedure if that plane is in what they claim as their airspace. [11] ”

The next day, the Soviet Union admitted to shooting down KAL 007, stating the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace. The attack pushed relations between the United States and the Soviet Union to a new low. On September 15, President Reagan ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to revoke the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to operate flights into and out of the United States. As a result, Aeroflot flights to North America were only available through cities in Canada or Mexico. Aeroflot service to the United States was not restored until April 29, 1986.[12]

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, commissioned an audio-visual presentation in the Security Council using tapes of the Soviet radio conversations and a map of the plane's flight path to depict the shoot-down as savage and unjustified. Alvin A. Snyder, producer of the video, later revealed in a September 1, 1996 article in the Washington Post that he was given only selected portions of the tape of the Soviet military conversation that led to the downing of the aircraft. Unedited versions of the tape later revealed to Snyder that the Soviets had in fact given the plane internationally recognized warning signals.[13]

Airway R20 (Romeo 20), the flight path that Korean Air Flight 007 was supposed to fly, which came within 17 miles of Soviet airspace at its closest point, was closed after the accident on September 2. This reflected shock, and the need to reassure the public. However, pilots and airlines fiercely resisted and the route was reopened on October 2. More significantly, the US decided to utilize military radars, extending the radar coverage from Anchorage from 200 to 1200 miles. These radars had been used in 1968 to alert Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 in a similar situation. R. W. Johnson writes in his 1986 book Shootdown: "The question of why these radars were not used to alert 007 remains."[14]As a result of this incident, Ronald Reagan announced that the Global Positioning System (GPS) would be made available for civilian uses once completed.[15]

[edit] September 24, 1983

In response to heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union following the Korean Air shoot down and their knowledge of preparations for Able Archer 83, the KGB had issued alerts to prepare for a possible nuclear first strike by the US.[16] On September 24, 1983, software running on computers in the Serpukhov-15 bunker mistakenly detected a rare sunlight alignment as five nuclear missiles launched from the US targeting Moscow. In the event of such an attack, the Soviet Union’s strategy protocol was to launch an immediate all-out nuclear weapons counterattack against the United States and then afterwards inform political and military personnel. Strategic Rocket Forces lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov dismissed the missiles as computer errors, despite pressure by other officers in the bunker to commence responsive actions. He was later accused of disobeying orders and defying military protocol, reassigned, and finally took early retirement.[17]

[edit] Able Archer 83

Main article: Able Archer 83

The shoot down of Flight 007 was an incident which had ramifications on the Cold War later in 1983 when NATO conducted a simulation of the procedures up to nuclear release. Held in November, Able Archer 83 was even supposed to include the participation of President Reagan. Tension between the superpowers had been high before Flight 007 was shot down, President Reagan's rhetoric afterward, and world reaction, led some in the USSR to believe that Able Archer 83 was a genuine nuclear first strike.[18][19][20] In response, the Soviets readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland on alert.[21][22] This relatively obscure incident is considered by many historians to be the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.[23] The threat of nuclear war abruptly ended with the conclusion of the Able Archer 83 exercise on November 11, which, coincidentally, was also Armistice Day (alternatively called Remembrance Day or Veterans Day).[24][25]

[edit] Bribe to the South Korean President

In 1996 a The New York Times article revealed that South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan accepted $4 million from Korean Air in order to gain "government protection" during the investigation of the shootdown. [26]

[edit] Conspiracy theories

The Korean Air Flight 007 incident has spawned a number of conspiracy theories, none of which has been confirmed by official sources. At least two of them allege that the flight was on a spy mission.[27][28] One of these specified that in addition to Korean Air Flight 007, the space shuttle Challenger and a satellite were monitoring its progress over Soviet territory. The magazine which printed this version was sued by Korean Air Lines, and forced to pay damages as well as print an apology to the airline.[29] When the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder were released by Russian authorities in the early 1990s, mainstream coverage of conspiracy theories regarding the flight ceased.

[edit] Popular culture

  • Three television movies were produced about the incident; both films were produced before the fall of the Soviet Union allowed access to archives:
    • Shootdown (1988), starring Angela Lansbury, John Cullum, and Kyle Secor, was based on the book of the same title by R.W. Johnson, about the efforts of Nan Moore (Lansbury), the mother of a passenger, to get answers from the US and Russian governments.
    • Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy (1989), an HBO Original Movie with Michael Morriarty and Soon-Tek Oh
    • The British Granada Television documentary drama Coded Hostile (1989 - US title Tailspin) detailed the US military and governmental investigation, highlighting the likely confusion of Flight 007 with the USAF RC-135 in the context of routine US SIGINT/COMINT missions in the area. An updated version of Coded Hostile was screened in the UK in 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation.
  • A documentary from Unsolved History, a program of Discovery Channel, featured this incident.
  • The song "Murder in the Skies" by Gary Moore on his album Victims of the Future (1983) retells the incident.
  • The song "The Ballad of Flight 007" by Gerald R. Griffin (1983) recounts the story from both a personal and political perspective.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Air Disaster.com entry
  2. ^ a b Doerner, William R, Ed Magnuson. "Atrocity In the Skies," Time. 5.
  3. ^ Farber, Stephen. "TELEVISION; Why Sparks Flew in Retelling the Tale of Flight 007," The New York Times. Published November 27, 1988. Accessed January 4, 2008
  4. ^ a b "Korean Air Disaster," Unsolved History
  5. ^ Doerner, William R, Ed Magnuson. "Atrocity In the Skies," Time. 4.
  6. ^ a b c A Cold War Conundrum - Benjamin B. Fischerm, available online from the Central Intelligence Agency: https://www.cia.gov/csi/monograph/coldwar/source.htm
  7. ^ Maier, Timothy (2001-04-16), "Kal 007 Mystery - Korean Airlines flight 007 incident", Insight on the News, <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_14_17/ai_75819892/pg_4> (based on ground radar measurements supplied by the Soviets to the UN in 1993
  8. ^ a b http://www.icao.int/cgi/goto_m.pl?icao/en/trivia/kal_flight_007.htm Summary of the 1993 second ICAO report of KAL 007 shoot down.
  9. ^ New York Times, September 12th, 1983, pg.1
  10. ^ New York Times interview, September 9, 1996
  11. ^ Transcript of Reagan's speech from the University of Texas
  12. ^ Timeline of US/Russian relations from the US Embassy in Moscow http://moscow.usembassy.gov/links/history.php
  13. ^ "The Age of the New Persuaders" Military Review May-Jun 1997 from leav-www.army.mil Accessdate: 05/13/2007
  14. ^ Johnson, R. W. (1986). Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection. New York, N.Y: Viking, 81-82, 277. ISBN 0-670-81209-9. 
  15. ^ History of GPS from usinfo.state.gov
  16. ^ War Games: Soviets, fearing Western attack, prepared for worst in '83 CNN
  17. ^ 24 years on - The man who saved millions of lives MaltaStar September 22, 2007
  18. ^ Andrew and Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov's Instructions, 85–7.
  19. ^ Beth Fischer, Reagan Reversal, 123, 131.
  20. ^ Pry, War Scare, 37–9.
  21. ^ Oberdorfer, A New Era, 66.
  22. ^ SNIE 11-10-84 “Implications of Recent Soviet Military-Political Activities” Central Intelligence Agency, 18 May, 1984.
  23. ^ John Lewis Gaddis and John Hashimoto. COLD WAR Chat: Professor John Lewis Gaddis, Historian. Retrieved on 2005-12-29.
  24. ^ Andrew and Gordievsky, Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions, 87–8.
  25. ^ Pry, War Scare, 43–4.
  26. ^ "Korean Bribe Rekindles Flight 007 Issues," The New York Times
  27. ^ Fallout from Flight 007 Time magazine, Monday, Sep. 10, 1984 By ED MAGNUSON
  28. ^ Fallout from Flight 007 page 2, Time magazine, Monday, Sep. 10, 1984 By ED MAGNUSON
  29. ^ Backing Down on Flight 007 Time magazine, Monday, Dec. 03, 1984

[edit] Further reading

  • Bamford, James (1983). The Puzzle Palace. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-006748-5. 
  • Brun, Michael; Robert Bononno (Translator) (1996). Incident at Sakhalin: The True Mission of KAL Flight 007. Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-054-1. 
  • Clubb, Oliver (1985). KAL Flight 007: The Hidden Story. The Permanent Press. ISBN 0-932966-59-4. 
  • Dallin, Alexander (1985). Black Box: KAL 007 and the Superpowers. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05515-2. 
  • Gollin, James; Robert Allardyce (1994). Desired Track. American Vision Publishing. ISBN 1-883868-01-7. 
  • Grady, William P. (2005). "KAL 007", Understanding the Times - Volume One: How Satan Turned America From God. Grady Publications, pp. 504-570. ISBN 0-9628809-3-0. 
  • Hersh, Seymour M. (1987). "The Target Is Destroyed": What Really Happened to Flight 007. Vintage. ISBN 0-394-75527-8. 
  • Johnson, R. W. (1986). Shootdown: Flight 007 and the American Connection. Viking Penguin. ISBN 0-670-81209-9. 
  • Kirkpatrick, Jeane Jordan (1988). "KAL-007: Violating the Norms of Civil Conduct", Legitimacy and Force. Transaction, Inc., pp. 374-375. ISBN 0-88738-100-6. Retrieved on 2007-07-27. 
  • Luttwak, Edward N. (1985). "Delusions of Soviet Weakness", Strategy and History. Transaction, Inc., pp. 241-243. ISBN 0-88738-065-4. Retrieved on 2007-07-27. 
  • Pearson, David E. (1987). KAL 007: The Cover-Up. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-55716-5. 
  • Pry, Peter Vincent (1999). "The KAL Crisis, September 1983", War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink. Praeger Publishers, pp. 27-31. ISBN 0-275-96643-7. Retrieved on 2007-07-27. 
  • Rohmer, Richard (1984). Massacre 007: The Story of the Korean Air Lines Flight 007. Hodder Headline Australia. ISBN 0340364475. 
  • "Secrets of the Black Box: KAL 007". The History Channel. 2006.
  • Snyder, Alvin (1995). Warriors of Disinformation. Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-389-X. 
  • St. John, Jeffrey (1984). Day of the Cobra: The True Story of KAL Flight 007. Thomas Nelson. ISBN 0-8407-5381-0. 
  • Sypher, Richard (2002). Death of Flight 007. Think Publishing. ISBN 1891098055. 
  • Takahashi, Akio (1985). Truth Behind KAL Flight 007. Apt Books. ISBN 0865907870. 
  • Woodson, Frank (2000). The Last Flight of 007 (Take Ten: Disaster). Artesian Press. ISBN 1586590251. 

[edit] External links

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