KAL 007
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Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007)In aviation, two types of airline designators are used. The flight number KAL 007, with the
ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
code for Korean Air Lines, was used by
air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...
. In ticketing, however,
IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is an airline trade association founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff conferences tha ...
codes are used instead, so the flight was referred to as KE007 in the booking systems and on the passengers' tickets.
was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to
Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the flight was shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15TM Flagon-F interceptor aircraft. The Boeing 747-230B airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but owing to a navigational mistake made by the crew, the airliner drifted from its planned route and flew through Soviet airspace. The
Soviet Air Forces The Soviet Air Forces (, VVS SSSR; literally "Military Air Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"; initialism VVS, sometimes referred to as the "Red Air Force") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Sovie ...
treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots. The South Korean airliner eventually crashed into the sea near Moneron Island west of
Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
in the
Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...
, killing all 246 passengers and 23 crew aboard, including Larry McDonald, a United States representative. It is the worst Korean Air Lines disaster to date. The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident, but later admitted to shooting down the aircraft, claiming that it was on a MASINT spy mission. The
Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated as Politburo, was the de facto highest executive authority in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). While elected by and formally a ...
said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States to probe the Soviet Union's military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The U.S. accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations.Congressional Record, September 20, 1983, pp. S12462–S12464 The
Soviet Armed Forces The Armed Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, the Red Army (1918–1946) and the Soviet Army (1946–1991), were the armed forces of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republi ...
suppressed evidence sought by the
International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
(ICAO) investigation, such as the flight recorders, which were released in 1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As a result of the incident, the United States altered tracking procedures for aircraft departing from Alaska, and President Ronald Reagan issued a directive making American satellite-based radio navigation
Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide ge ...
freely available for civilian use, once it was sufficiently developed, as a common good.


Details of the flight


Aircraft

The aircraft flying as Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was a Boeing 747-230B jet airliner with Boeing serial number 20559. The aircraft was powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A engines. It had been delivered new to
Condor Condor is the common name for two species of New World vultures, each in a monotypic genus. The name derives from the Quechua language, Quechua ''kuntur''. They are the largest flying land birds in the Western Hemisphere. One species, the And ...
in 1972 as D-ABYH. It was sold to Korean Air Lines in 1979 , re-registered HL7442 and was 11.5 years old at the time of incident. It was the 186th 747 built.


Passengers and crew

The aircraft flying as Korean Air Lines Flight 007 departed from Gate 15 of
John F. Kennedy International Airport John F. Kennedy International Airport is a major international airport serving New York City and its metropolitan area. JFK Airport is located on the southwestern shore of Long Island, in Queens, New York City, bordering Jamaica Bay. It is ...
, New York City, on August 31, 1983, at 00:25 EDT (04:25
UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
), bound for Kimpo International Airport in
Gangseo District, Seoul Gangseo District (; ) is one of the 25 districts (''gu'') of Seoul, South Korea. It is located on the south side of the Han River. South Korea's third busiest airport, Gimpo International Airport, is located in Gonghang-dong, where many fli ...
, 35 minutes behind its scheduled departure time of 23:50 EDT, August 30 (03:50
UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...
, August 31). The flight was carrying 246 passengers and 23 crew members.3 cockpit crew, 20 cabin crew and 6 deadheading crew (ICAO 93, Sect. 1.3, p. 6)Johnson, p. 6 After refuelling at Anchorage International Airport in
Anchorage, Alaska Anchorage, officially the Municipality of Anchorage, is the List of cities in Alaska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 291,247 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it contains nearly 40 percent of ...
, the aircraft departed for Seoul at 04:00 AHDT (13:00 UTC) on August 31, 1983. This leg of the journey was piloted by Captain Chun Byung-in (45), First Officer Son Dong-hui (47), and Flight Engineer Kim Eui-dong (31).Doerner, p. 5 Captain Chun had a total of 10,627 flight hours, including 6,618 hours in the 747. First Officer Son had a total of 8,917 flight hours, including 3,411 hours in the 747. Flight Engineer Kim had a total of 4,012 flight hours, including 2,614 hours on the 747. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 had an unusually high ratio of crew to passengers, as six deadheading crew were on board.Allardyce and Gollin, August 2007, p. 51 Twelve passengers occupied the upper deck, first class, while in business class almost all of the 24 seats were taken; in economy class, approximately 80 seats were empty. There were 22 children under the age of 12 years aboard. One hundred thirty passengers planned to connect to other destinations such as Tokyo,
Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...
, and
Taipei , nickname = The City of Azaleas , image_map = , map_caption = , pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth , coordinates = , subdivision_type = Country ...
.Doerner, p. 4
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
man Larry McDonald from Georgia, who at the time was also the second president of the conservative
John Birch Society The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, right-wing populist, and ...
, was on the flight. The Soviets contended former U.S. president
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...
was to have been seated next to Larry McDonald on KAL 007 but that the CIA warned him not to go, according to the ''
New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost. ...
'' and
Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union The Russian News Agency TASS, or simply TASS, is a Russian state-owned news agency founded in 1904. It is the largest Russian news agency and one of the largest news agencies worldwide. TASS is registered as a Federal State Unitary Enterpri ...
(TASS); according to former Nixon aide Franklin R. Gannon Nixon had received the offer but decided against it himself.


Flight deviation from assigned route

Less than a half-minute after taking off from Anchorage, KAL 007 was directed by
air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...
(ATC) to turn to a magnetic heading of 220°. This sharp turn, 100° to the left, was only to transition the plane from its initial heading at take-off (320° magnetic, in line with the runway it used), to bring it closer to a route known as J501, which KAL 007 was to take to
Bethel Bethel (, "House of El" or "House of God",Bleeker and Widegren, 1988, p. 257. also transliterated ''Beth El'', ''Beth-El'', ''Beit El''; ; ) was an ancient Israelite city and sacred space that is frequently mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Bet ...
. Approximately 90 seconds later, ATC directed the flight to "proceed direct Bethel when able." In response, the plane immediately began a slight turn to the right, to align it with route J501, and less than a minute later (3 minutes after take-off) was on a magnetic heading of approximately 245°, roughly toward Bethel. Upon KAL 007's arrival over Bethel, its flight plan called for it to take the northernmost of five airways, known as the NOPAC (North Pacific) routes, that bridge the Alaskan and Japanese coasts. That particular airway, R20 (''
Romeo Romeo Montague () is the male protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy ''Romeo and Juliet''. The son of Characters in Romeo and Juliet#Lord Montague, Lord Montague and his wife, Characters in Romeo and Juliet#Lady Montague, Lady Montague, he ...
Two Zero''), passed as close as from what was then Soviet airspace off the coast of the
Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...
. The lateral navigation half of the autopilot system of the 747-200 has four basic control modes: HEADING, VOR/LOC, ILS, and INS. The HEADING mode maintained a constant magnetic course selected by the pilot. The VOR/LOC mode maintained the plane on a specific course, transmitted from a VOR (VHF omnidirectional range, a type of short-range radio signal transmitted from ground beacons) or Localizer (LOC) beacon selected by the pilot. The ILS (instrument landing system) mode caused the plane to track both vertical and lateral course beacons, which led to a specific runway selected by the pilot. The INS (inertial navigation system) mode maintained the plane on lateral course lines between selected flight plan
waypoint A waypoint is a point or place on a route or line of travel, a stopping point, an intermediate point, or point at which course is changed, the first use of the term tracing to 1880. In modern terms, it most often refers to coordinates which spe ...
s programmed into the INS computer. When the INS navigation systems were properly programmed with the filed flight plan waypoints, the pilot could turn the autopilot mode selector switch to the INS position and the plane would then automatically track the programmed INS course line, provided the plane was headed in the proper direction and within of that course line. If, however, the plane was more than from the flight-planned course line when the pilot turned the autopilot mode selector from HEADING to INS, the plane would continue to track the heading selected in HEADING mode as long as the actual position of the plane was more than from the programmed INS course line. The autopilot computer software commanded the INS mode to remain in the "armed" condition until the plane had moved to a position less than from the desired course line. Once that happened, the INS mode would change from "armed" to "capture" and the plane would track the flight-planned course from then on. The HEADING mode of the autopilot would normally be engaged sometime after takeoff to follow vectors from ATC, and then after receiving appropriate ATC clearance, to guide the plane to intercept the desired INS course line. The Anchorage VOR beacon was not operational at the time, as it was undergoing maintenance. The crew received a
NOTAM A NOTAM (ICAO & FAA: Notice to Airmen, CAA: Notice to Aviation or, for the FAA from 2021 to 2025, Notice to Air Missions) is a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a loca ...
(Notice to Airmen) of this fact, which was not seen as a problem, as the captain could still check his position at the next VORTAC beacon at Bethel, away. The aircraft was required to maintain the assigned heading of 220 degrees until it could receive the signals from Bethel, then it could fly direct to Bethel, as instructed by ATC, by centering the VOR "to" course deviation indicator (CDI) and then engaging the autopilot in the VOR/LOC mode. Then, when over the Bethel beacon, the flight could start using INS mode to follow the waypoints that make up route ''Romeo-20'' around the coast of the U.S.S.R. to Seoul. The INS mode was necessary for this route since after Bethel the plane would be mostly out of range from VOR stations. At about 10 minutes after take-off, flying on a heading of 245 degrees, KAL 007 began to deviate to the right (north) of its assigned route to Bethel and continued to fly on this constant heading for the next five and a half hours.Daniloff, p. 304
International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
(ICAO)
simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...
and analysis of the flight data recorder determined that this deviation was probably caused by the aircraft's autopilot system operating in HEADING mode, after the point that it should have been switched to the INS mode. According to the ICAO, the autopilot was not operating in the INS mode either because the crew did not switch the autopilot to the INS mode (as they should have shortly after Cairn Mountain), or they did select the INS mode, but the computer did not transition from "armed" to "capture" condition because the aircraft had already deviated off track by more than the tolerance permitted by the inertial navigation computer. Whatever the reason, the autopilot remained in HEADING mode, and the problem was not detected by the crew. At 27 minutes after KAL 007's take-off, civilian radar at Kenai, located about southwest of Anchorage and with coverage of up to , showed it passing near Cairn Mountain, about west of Anchorage. It also showed that the aircraft by then was already off course—about north of its expected route to Bethel. Later, at 13:49 UTC (49 minutes after take-off), KAL 007 reported that it had reached its Bethel waypoint, about west of Anchorage. But traces from military radar at
King Salmon, Alaska King Salmon is a census-designated place (CDP) in Bristol Bay Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. It is southwest of Anchorage. As of the 2020 census the population was 307, down from 374 in 2010. It is home to Katmai National Park and Prese ...
, showed that the aircraft then was actually about north of that location—and heading farther off course. There is no evidence to indicate that anyone with access to King Salmon radar output that night—civil air traffic controllers or military radar personnel—was aware in real-time of KAL 007's deviation and in a position to warn the aircraft. But had the aircraft been steered under INS control, as was intended, such an error would have been far greater than the INS's nominal navigational accuracy of less than per hour of flight. KAL 007's divergence prevented the aircraft from transmitting its position via shorter-range very-high-frequency radio (VHF). It therefore requested KAL 015, also en route to Seoul, to relay reports to air traffic control on its behalf. KAL 007 requested KAL 015 to relay its position three times. At 14:43 UTC, KAL 007 directly transmitted a change of estimated time of arrival for its next waypoint, NEEVA, to the international flight service station at Anchorage, but it did so over the longer range
high frequency High frequency (HF) is the ITU designation for the band of radio waves with frequency between 3 and 30 megahertz (MHz). It is also known as the decameter band or decameter wave as its wavelengths range from one to ten decameters (ten to one ...
radio (HF) rather than VHF. HF transmissions can typically be heard at a greater distance than VHF, but are vulnerable to electromagnetic interference and static; VHF is clearer with less interference and is preferred by flight crews. The inability to establish direct radio communications via VHF did not alert the pilots of KAL 007 of their ever-increasing divergencePearson (1987), p. 40 and was not considered unusual by air traffic controllers. Halfway between Bethel and waypoint NABIE, KAL 007 passed through the southern portion of the
North American Aerospace Defense Command North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ; , CDAAN), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a Combined operations, combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air ...
buffer zone. This zone is north of ''Romeo 20'' and off-limits to civilian aircraft. Sometime after leaving American territorial waters, KAL Flight 007 crossed the
International Date Line The International Date Line (IDL) is the line extending between the South and North Poles that is the boundary between one calendar day and the next. It passes through the Pacific Ocean, roughly following the 180.0° line of longitude and de ...
, where the local date shifted from August 31, 1983, to September 1, 1983. KAL 007 continued its journey, ever-increasing its deviation— off course at waypoint NABIE, off course at waypoint NUKKS, and off course at waypoint NEEVA—until it reached the
Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...
.


Shoot-down

In 1983,
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had escalated to a level not seen since the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
because of several factors. These included the United States'
Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic nuclear missiles. The program was announced in 1983, by President Ronald Reagan. Reagan called for a ...
, its planned deployment of the Pershing II weapon system in Europe in March and April, and FleetEx '83-1, the largest naval exercise held to date in the North Pacific.Johnson, p. 55 The military hierarchy of the Soviet Union (particularly the old guard led by
Soviet General Secretary The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). From 1924 until the country's dissolution in 1991, the officeholder was the recognize ...
Yuri Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov ( – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from late 1982 until his death in 1984. He previously served as the List of Chairmen of t ...
and
Minister of Defence A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and military forces, found in states where the government is divid ...
Dmitry Ustinov Dmitriy Fyodorovich Ustinov (; 30 October 1908 – 20 December 1984) was a Soviet politician and a Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as a Central Committee secretary in charge of the Soviet military–industrial comple ...
) viewed these actions as bellicose and destabilizing; they were deeply suspicious of U.S. President
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...
's intentions and openly fearful he was planning a
pre-emptive nuclear strike In nuclear strategy, a first strike or preemptive strike is a preemptive surprise attack employing overwhelming force. First strike capability is a country's ability to defeat another nuclear power by destroying its arsenal to the point where th ...
against the Soviet Union. These fears culminated in RYAN, the code name for a secret intelligence-gathering program initiated by Andropov to detect a potential nuclear sneak attack which he believed Reagan was plotting. Aircraft from and repeatedly overflew Soviet military installations in the
Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands are a volcanic archipelago administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the Russian Far East. The islands stretch approximately northeast from Hokkaido in Japan to Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, separating the ...
during FleetEx '83 naval exercise (29March to 17April 1983),Pry, p. 20 resulting in the dismissal or reprimanding of Soviet military officials who had been unable to shoot them down. On the Soviet side, RYAN was expanded.Fischer, ''A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare'' Lastly, there was a heightened alert around the
Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...
at the time that KAL 007 was in the vicinity, because of a Soviet missile test at the Kura Missile Test Range that was scheduled for the same day. A
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...
Boeing RC-135 The Boeing RC-135 is a family of large reconnaissance aircraft built by Boeing and modified by a number of companies, including General Dynamics, Lockheed, LTV, E-Systems, L3Harris Technologies, and used by the United States Air Force and ...
reconnaissance aircraft flying in the area was monitoring the missile test off the peninsula.Schultz, p. 367 At 15:51 UTC, according to Soviet sources, KAL 007 entered the
restricted airspace Restricted airspace is an area of airspace typically used by the military in which the local controlling authorities have determined that air traffic must be restricted or prohibited for safety or security concerns. It is one of many types of s ...
of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The buffer zone extended from Kamchatka's coast and is known as a
flight information region In aviation, a flight information region (FIR) is a specified region of airspace in which a flight information service, an alerting service (ALRS), and an area control centre are provided. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) dele ...
(FIR). The radius of the buffer zone nearest to Soviet territory had the additional designation of prohibited airspace. When KAL 007 was about from the Kamchatka coast, four
MiG-23 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 (; NATO reporting name: Flogger) is a variable-geometry fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the Soviet Union. It is a third-generation jet fighter, alongside similar Soviet aircra ...
fighters were scrambled to intercept the Boeing 747.Degani, 2001 Significant command and control problems were experienced trying to vector the fast military jets onto the 747 before they ran out of fuel. In addition, the pursuit was made more difficult, according to Soviet Air Force Captain Aleksandr Zuyev, who
defected In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, ca ...
to the West in 1989, because, ten days before, Arctic
gale A gale is a strong wind; the word is typically used as a descriptor in nautical contexts. The U.S. National Weather Service defines a gale as sustained surface wind moving at a speed between .
s had knocked out the key warning radar on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Furthermore, he stated that local officials responsible for repairing the radar lied to Moscow, falsely reporting that they had successfully fixed the radar. Had this radar been operational, it would have enabled an intercept of the stray airliner roughly two hours earlier with plenty of time for proper identification as a civilian aircraft. Instead, the unidentified jetliner crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula back into international airspace over the
Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk; Historically also known as , or as ; ) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, Japan's island of Hokkaido on the sou ...
without being intercepted. In his explanation to ''
60 Minutes ''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style o ...
'', Zuyev stated: "Some people lied to Moscow, trying to save their ass." The Commander of the Soviet Far East District Air Defense Forces, General Valeri Kamensky, was adamant that KAL 007 was to be destroyed even over neutral waters but only after positive identification showed it not to be a passenger plane. His subordinate, General Anatoly Kornukov, commander of Sokol Air Base and later to become commander of the Russian Air Force, insisted that there was no need to make positive identification as the intruder aircraft had already flown over the Kamchatka Peninsula. Units of the
Soviet Air Defence Forces The Soviet Air Defence Forces (; ) was the air defence branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Formed in 1941, it continued being a service branch of the Russian Armed Forces after 1991 until it was merged into the Air Force in 1998. Unlike Western ...
that had been tracking the South Korean aircraft for more than an hour while it entered and left Soviet airspace now classified the aircraft as a military target when it re-entered their airspace over Sakhalin. After a protracted
ground-controlled interception Ground-controlled interception (GCI) is an air defence tactic whereby one or more radar stations or other observational stations are linked to a command communications centre which guides interceptor aircraft to an airborne target. This tactic wa ...
, the three Su-15 fighters (from nearby Dolinsk-Sokol airbase) and the MiG-23 (from Smirnykh Air Base) managed to make visual contact with the Boeing, but, owing to the black of night, failed to make critical identification of the aircraft which Russian communications reveal. The pilot of the lead Su-15 fighter fired
warning shot In military and police contexts, a warning shot is an intentionally harmless artillery shot or gunshot with intent to enact direct compliance and order to a hostile perpetrator or enemy forces. It is recognized as signalling intended confronta ...
s with its cannon, but recalled later in 1991, "I fired four bursts, more than 200 rounds. For all the good it did. After all, I was loaded with armor-piercing shells, not incendiary shells. It's doubtful whether anyone could see them."Illesh, ''The Mystery of the KAL-007'' At this point, KAL 007 contacted Tokyo Area Control Center, requesting clearance to ascend to a higher
flight level In aviation, a flight level (FL) is an aircraft's altitude as determined by a pressure altimeter using the International Standard Atmosphere. It is expressed in hundreds of feet or metres. The altimeter setting used is the ISA sea level pressur ...
for reasons of fuel economy; the request was granted, so the Boeing started to climb, gradually slowing as it exchanged speed for altitude. The decrease in speed caused the pursuing fighter to overshoot the Boeing and was interpreted by the Soviet pilot as an evasive maneuver. The order to shoot KAL 007 down was given as it was about to leave Soviet airspace for the second time. At around 18:26 UTC, under pressure from General Kornukov and ground controllers not to let the aircraft escape into international airspace, the lead fighter was able to move back into a position where it could fire two K-8 (
NATO reporting name NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...
: AA-3 "Anab")
air-to-air missile An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft (including unmanned aircraft such as cruise missiles). AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid-fuel roc ...
s at the plane.Maier, ''KAL 007 Mystery''


Soviet pilot's recollection of shoot-down

In a 1991 interview with ''
Izvestia ''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...
'', Major Gennadiy Osipovich, pilot of the Su-15 interceptor that shot the aircraft down, spoke about his recollections of the events leading up to the shoot-down. Contrary to official Soviet statements at the time, he recalled telling ground controllers that there were "blinking lights". He continued, saying of the 747-230B, "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." Osipovich stated, "I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane; they did not ask me."Gordon, ''Ex-Soviet Pilot Still Insists KAL 007 Was Spying'' Commenting on the moment that KAL 007 slowed as it ascended from
flight level In aviation, a flight level (FL) is an aircraft's altitude as determined by a pressure altimeter using the International Standard Atmosphere. It is expressed in hundreds of feet or metres. The altimeter setting used is the ISA sea level pressur ...
330 to flight level 350, and then on his maneuvering for a missile launch, Osipovich said: Osipovich died on September 23, 2015, after a protracted illness.


Soviet command hierarchy of shoot-down

The Soviet real-time military communication transcripts of the shoot-down suggest the chain of command from the top general to Major Osipovich, the Su-15 interceptor pilot who shot down KAL 007.ICAO '93, Information Paper No. 1, p. 190 In reverse order, they are: * Major Gennadiy Nikolayevich Osipovich, * Captain Titovnin, Combat Control Center – Fighter Division * Lt. Colonel Maistrenko, Smirnykh Air Base Fighter Division Acting Chief of Staff, confirmed the shoot-down order to Titovnin. * Lt. Colonel Gerasimenko, Acting Commander, 41st Fighter Regiment. * General Anatoly Kornukov, Commander of Sokol Air Base – Sakhalin. * General Valery Kamensky, Commander of Far East Military District Air Defense Forces. * Army General Ivan Moiseevich Tretyak, Commander of the Far East Military District.


Post-attack flight

At the time of the attack, the plane had been cruising at an altitude of about . Tapes recovered from the airliner's
cockpit voice recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...
indicate that the crew was unaware that they were off course and violating Soviet airspace. Immediately after missile detonation, the airliner began a 113-second arc upward because of a damaged crossover cable between the left inboard and right outboard elevators.ICAO '93, p. 55 At 18:26:46 UTC (03:26 Japan Time; 06:26 Sakhalin time),ICAO '93, p. 54 at the apex of the arc at altitude , the autopilot disengaged (this was either done by the pilots, or it disengaged automatically). Now being controlled manually, the plane began to descend to . From 18:27:01 until 18:27:09, the flight crew reported to the Tokyo Area Control Center informing that KAL 007 would "descend to 10,000" eet; 3,000m At 18:27:20, ICAO graphing of Digital Flight Data Recorder tapes showed that after a descent phase and a 10-second "nose-up", KAL 007 was leveled out at pre-missile detonation altitude of , forward acceleration was back to pre-missile detonation rate of zero acceleration, and airspeed had returned to pre-detonation velocity. Yaw oscillations, beginning at the time of missile detonation, continued decreasingly until the end of the 1-minute 44-second section of the tape. The Boeing did not break up, explode, or plummet immediately after the attack; it continued its gradual descent for four minutes, then leveled off at (18:30–18:31 UTC), rather than continuing to descend to as previously reported to Tokyo Area Control Center. It continued at this altitude for almost five more minutes (18:35 UTC). The last
cockpit voice recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...
entry occurred at 18:27:46 while in this phase of the descent. At 18:28 UTC, the aircraft was reported turning to the north.ICAO '93, Information Paper No. 1, p. 132 ICAO analysis concluded that the flight crew "retained limited control" of the aircraft. However, this lasted for only five minutes. The crew then lost all control. The aircraft began to descend rapidly in spirals over Moneron Island for . The aircraft then broke apart in mid-air and crashed into the ocean, just off the west coast of
Sakhalin Island Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
. All 269 people on board were killed.The last plotted radar position of the target was 18:35 hours at 5,000 meters." (ICAO '93, p. 53, para. 2.15.8) The aircraft was last seen visually by Osipovich, "somehow descending slowly" over Moneron Island. The aircraft disappeared off long-range military radar at
Wakkanai file:Wakkanai city office.JPG, 290px, Wakkanai City Hall file:Wakkanai shore.jpg, 290px, Shore of Wakkanai is a Cities of Japan, city located in Sōya Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. Wakkanai is the capital of Sōya Subprefecture. Situated approx ...
, Japan, at a height of . KAL 007 was probably attacked in international airspace, with a 1993 Russian report listing the location of the missile firing outside its territory at , although the intercepting pilot stated otherwise in a subsequent interview. Initial reports that the airliner had been forced to land on Sakhalin were soon proven false. One of these reports conveyed via phone by Orville Brockman, the Washington office spokesman of the
Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...
, to the press secretary of Larry McDonald, was that the FAA in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau that "Japanese self-defense force radar confirms that the Hokkaido radar followed Air Korea to a landing in Soviet territory on the island of Sakhalinska and it is confirmed by the manifest that Congressman McDonald is on board". A Japanese fisherman aboard ''58th Chidori Maru'' later reported to the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency (this report was cited by ICAO analysis) that he had heard a plane at low altitude, but had not seen it. Then he heard "a loud sound followed by a bright flash of light on the horizon, then another dull sound and a less intense flash of light on the horizon" and smelled aviation fuel.


Soviet command response to post-detonation flight

Though the interceptor pilot reported to ground control, "Target destroyed", the Soviet command, from the general on down, indicated surprise and consternation at KAL 007's continued flight, and ability to regain its altitude and maneuver. This consternation continued through to KAL 007's subsequent level flight at altitude , and then, after almost five minutes, through its spiral descent over Moneron Island.


Missile damage to plane

The following damage to the aircraft was determined by the ICAO from its analysis of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder:


=Hydraulics

= KAL 007 had four redundant hydraulic systems of which systems one, two, and three were damaged or destroyed. There was no evidence of damage to system four. The hydraulics provided actuation of all primary and secondary flight controls (except leading edge slats in the latter) as well as landing gear retraction, extension, gear steering, and wheel braking. Each primary flight control axis received power from all four hydraulic systems. Upon missile detonation, the jumbo jet began to experience oscillations (yawing) as the dual channel yaw damper was damaged. Yawing would not have occurred if hydraulic systems one or two were fully operational. The result is that the control column did not thrust forward after missile detonation (it should have done so as the plane was on autopilot) to bring the plane down to its former altitude of . This failure of the autopilot to correct the rise in altitude indicates that hydraulic system number three, which operates the autopilot actuator, a system controlling the plane's elevators, was damaged or out. KAL 007's airspeed and acceleration rate both began to decrease as the plane began to climb. At twenty seconds after the missile detonation, a click was heard in the cabin, which is identified as the "automatic pilot disconnect warning" sound. Either the pilot or co-pilot had disconnected the autopilot and was manually thrusting the control column forward to bring the plane lower. Though the autopilot had been turned off, manual mode did not begin functioning for another twenty seconds. This failure of the manual system to engage upon command indicates failure in hydraulic systems one and two. With wing flaps up, "control was reduced to the right inboard
aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement aroun ...
and the innermost of spoiler section of each side".


=Left wing

= Contrary to Major Osipovich's statement in 1991 that he had taken off half of KAL 007's left wing, ICAO analysis found that the wing was intact: "The interceptor pilot stated that the first missile hit near the tail, while the second missile took off half the left wing of the aircraft... The interceptor's pilot's statement that the second missile took off half of the left wing was probably incorrect. The missiles were fired at a two-second interval and would have detonated at an equal interval. The first detonated at 18:26:02 UTC. The last radio transmissions from KE007 to Tokyo Radio were between 18:26:57 and 18:27:15 UTC using HF igh frequency The HF 1 radio aerial of the aircraft was positioned in the left wing tip suggesting that the left wing tip was intact at this time. Also, the aircraft's maneuvers after the attack did not indicate extensive damage to the left wing."ICAO '93, p. 39


=Engines

= The co-pilot reported to Captain Chun twice during the flight after the missiles' detonation, "Engines normal, sir."


=Tail section

= The first missile was radar-controlled and
proximity fuze A Proximity Fuse (also VT fuse or "variable time fuze") is a fuse that detonates an explosive device automatically when it approaches within a certain distance of its target. Proximity fuses are designed for elusive military targets such as air ...
d, and detonated behind the aircraft. Sending fragments forward, it either severed or unraveled the crossover cable from the left inboard elevator to the right elevator. This, with damage to one of the four hydraulic systems, caused KAL 007 to ascend from , at which point the autopilot was disengaged.


=Fuselage

= Fragments from the
proximity fuze A Proximity Fuse (also VT fuse or "variable time fuze") is a fuse that detonates an explosive device automatically when it approaches within a certain distance of its target. Proximity fuses are designed for elusive military targets such as air ...
d
air-to-air missile An air-to-air missile (AAM) is a missile fired from an aircraft for the purpose of destroying another aircraft (including unmanned aircraft such as cruise missiles). AAMs are typically powered by one or more rocket motors, usually solid-fuel roc ...
that detonated behind the aircraft, punctured the fuselage and caused rapid decompression of the pressurised cabin. The interval of 11 seconds between the sound of missile detonation picked up by the cockpit voice recorder and the sound of the alarm sounding in the cockpit enabled ICAO analysts to determine that the size of the ruptures to the pressurised fuselage was .ICAO '93, Information Paper 1, p. 93


Search and rescue

As a result of Cold War tensions, the search and rescue operations of the Soviet Union were not coordinated with those of the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Consequently, no information was shared, and each side endeavored to harass or obtain evidence to implicate the other. The flight data recorders were the key pieces of evidence sought by both governments, with the United States insisting that an independent observer from the ICAO be present on one of its search vessels if they were found. International boundaries are not well defined on the open sea, leading to numerous confrontations between the large number of opposing naval ships that were assembled in the area.Isaacson ''et al.'', 1983


Soviet search and rescue mission to Moneron Island

The Soviets did not acknowledge shooting down the aircraft until September 6, five days after the flight was shot down. Eight days after the shoot-down,
Marshal of the Soviet Union Marshal of the Soviet Union (, ) was the second-highest military rank of the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin wore the uniform and insignia of Marshal after World War II. The rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union was created in 1935 and abolished in ...
and Chief of General Staff
Nikolai Ogarkov Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov (; 30 October 1917 – 23 January 1994) was a prominent Soviet military personality. He was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1977. Between 1977 and 1984, he was Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Union, ...
denied knowledge of where KAL 007 had gone down; "We could not give the precise answer about the spot where it AL 007fell because we ourselves did not know the spot in the first place." Nine years later, the Russian Federation handed over transcripts of Soviet military communications that showed that at least two documented search and rescue (SAR) missions were ordered within a half-hour of the attack, to the last Soviet-verified location of the descending jumbo jet over Moneron Island. The first search was ordered from Smirnykh Air Base in central Sakhalin at 18:47 UTC, nine minutes after KAL 007 had disappeared from Soviet radar screens and brought rescue helicopters from Khomutovo Air Base (the military unit at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport in southern Sakhalin), and
Soviet Border Troops The Soviet Border Troops () were the border guard of the Soviet Union, subordinated to the Soviet state security agency: first to the ''Cheka''/State Political Directorate, OGPU, then to NKVD/Ministry for State Security (USSR), MGB and, final ...
boats to the area. The second search was ordered eight minutes later by the Deputy Commander of the
Far Eastern Military District The Far Eastern Military District () was a military district of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In 2010 it was merged with the Pacific Fleet and part of the Siberian Military District to form the new Eastern Military District. Histo ...
, General Strogov, and involved civilian
trawlers Trawler may refer to: Boats * Fishing trawler, used for commercial fishing * Naval trawler Naval trawlers are vessels built along the lines of a fishing trawler but fitted out for naval purposes; they were widely used during the World War I, Fir ...
that were in the area around Moneron. "The border guards. What ships do we now have near Moneron Island? If they are civilians, send
hem A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the ga ...
there immediately."ICAO, '93, Information Paper No. 1., pp. 95–96 Moneron is just long and wide, located due west of Sakhalin Island at ; it is the only land mass in the whole Tatar Straits.


Search for KAL 007 in international waters

Immediately after the shoot-down, South Korea, the owner of the aircraft and therefore prime considerant for jurisdiction, designated the United States and Japan as search and salvage agents, thereby making it illegal for the Soviet Union to salvage the aircraft, providing it was found outside Soviet territorial waters. If it did so, the United States would now be legally entitled to use force against the Soviets, if necessary, to prevent retrieval of any part of the plane.''Shootdown'', R.W. Johnson, Viking, New York, 1985, p. 194 On the same day as the shoot-down, Rear Admiral William A. Cockell, Commander, Task Force 71, and a skeleton staff, taken by helicopter from Japan, embarked in (stationed off Vladivostok at the time) on September 9 for further transfer to the destroyer to assume duties as Officer in Tactical Command (OTC) of the Search and Rescue (SAR) effort. A surface search began immediately and on into September 13. U.S. underwater operations began on September 14. On September 10, 1983, with no further hope of finding survivors, Task Force 71's mission was reclassified from a "Search and Rescue" (SAR) operation to a "Search and Salvage" (SAS).ICAO '93, p. 17, sect. 1.11.7 On October 17, Rear Admiral Walter T. Piotti, Jr. took command of the task force and its search and salvage mission from Rear Admiral Cockell. First to be searched was a "high probability" area. This was unsuccessful. On October 21, Task Force 71 extended its search within coordinates encompassing, in an arc around the Soviet territorial boundaries north of Moneron Island, an area of , reaching to the west of Sakhalin Island. This was the "large probability" area. The search areas were outside the Soviet-claimed territorial boundaries. The northwesternmost point of the search touched the Soviet territorial boundary closest to the naval port of Nevelsk on Sakhalin. Nevelsk was from Moneron. This larger search was also unsuccessful. The vessels used in the search, for the Soviet side as well as the US side (US, South Korea, Japan) were both civilian trawlers, specially equipped for both the SAR and SAS operations, and various types of warships and support ships. The Soviet side also employed both civilian and military divers. The Soviet search, beginning on the day of the shoot-down and continuing until November 6, was confined to the "high probability" area in international waters, and within Soviet territorial waters to the north of Moneron Island. The area within Soviet territorial waters was off-limits to the U.S., South Korean, and Japanese boats. From September 3 to 29, four ships from South Korea joined in the search. Piotti Jr, commander of Task Force 71 of the 7th Fleet would summarize the US and Allied, and then the Soviets', Search and Salvage operations: These missions met with interference by the Soviets, in violation of the 1972 Incidents at Sea agreement, and included
false flag A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misrep ...
and fake light signals, sending an armed boarding party to threaten to board a U.S.-chartered Japanese auxiliary vessel (blocked by U.S. warship interposition), interfering with a helicopter coming off the USS ''Elliot'' (Sept. 7), attempted ramming of rigs used by the South Koreans in their quadrant search, hazardous maneuvering of ''Gavril Sarychev'' and near-collision with the (September 15, 18), removing U.S.
sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...
s, setting false pingers in deep international waters, sending Backfire bombers armed with
air-to-surface An air-to-surface missile (ASM) or air-to-ground missile (AGM) is a missile designed to be launched from military aircraft at targets on land or sea. There are also unpowered guided glide bombs not considered missiles. The two most common pro ...
nuclear-armed missiles to threaten U.S. naval units, criss-crossing in front of U.S. combatant vessels (October 26), cutting and attempted cutting of moorings of Japanese auxiliary vessels, particularly ''Kaiko Maru III'', and
radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...
lock-ons by a Soviet , '' Petropavlovsk'', and a , '' Odarennyy'', targeting U.S. naval ships and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter USCGC ''Douglas Munro'' (WHEC-724), , escorting , experienced all of the above interference and was involved in a near-collision with ''Odarennyy'' (September 23–27).Winkler, p. 47 According to the ICAO: "The location of the main wreckage was not determined... the approximate position was , which was in international waters." This point is about from Moneron Island, about from the shore of
Sakhalin Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
and from the point of attack. Piotti Jr, commander of Task Force 71 of 7th Fleet, believed the search for KAL 007 in international waters to have been a search in the wrong place and assessed:
Had TF ask force71 been permitted to search without restriction imposed by claimed territorial waters, the aircraft stood a good chance of having been found. No wreckage of KAL 007 was found. However, the operation established, with a 95% or above confidence level, that the wreckage, or any significant portion of the aircraft, does not lie within the probability area outside the 12 nautical mile area claimed by the Soviets as their territorial limit.
At a hearing of the ICAO on September 15, 1983, J. Lynn Helms, the head of the
Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is a Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government agency within the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation that regulates civil aviation in t ...
, stated: "The USSR has refused to permit search and rescue units from other countries to enter Soviet territorial waters to search for the remains of KAL 007. Moreover, the Soviet Union has blocked access to the likely crash site and has refused to cooperate with other interested parties, to ensure prompt recovery of all technical equipment, wreckage, and other material."


Human remains and artifacts


Surface finds

No body parts were recovered by the Soviet search team from the surface of the sea in their territorial waters, though they would later turn over clothes and shoes to a joint U.S.–Japanese delegation at Nevelsk on Sakhalin. On Monday, September 26, 1983, a delegation of seven Japanese and U.S. officials arriving aboard the Japanese patrol boat ''Tsugaru'', had met a six-man Soviet delegation at the port of Nevelsk on Sakhalin Island. KGB Major General A. I. Romanenko, the Commander of the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands frontier guard, headed the Soviet delegation. Romanenko handed over to the U.S. and the Japanese, among other things, single and paired footwear. With footwear that the Japanese also retrieved, the total came to 213 men's, women's, and children's dress shoes, sandals, and sports shoes. The Soviets indicated these items were all that they had retrieved floating or on the shores of Sakhalin and Moneron islands. Family members of KAL 007 passengers later stated that these shoes were worn by their loved ones for the flight. Sonia Munder had no difficulty recognizing the sneakers of her children, one from Christian, age 14, and one from Lisi, age 17, by the intricate way her children laced them. Another mother says, "I recognized them just like that. You see, there are all kinds of inconspicuous marks that strangers do not notice. This is how I recognized them. My daughter loved to wear them." Another mother, Nan Oldham, identified her son John's sneakers from a photo in ''Life'' magazine of 55 of the 213 shoes—apparently a random array on display those first days at Chitose Air Force Base in Japan. "We saw photos of his shoes in a magazine," says Oldham, "We followed up through KAL and a few weeks later, a package arrived. His shoes were inside: size 11 sneakers with cream white paint." John Oldham had taken his seat in row 31 of KAL 007 wearing those cream white paint-spattered sneakers. Nothing was found by the joint U.S.–Japanese–South Korean search and rescue/salvage operations in international waters at the designated crash site or within the search area.


Hokkaido finds

Eight days after the shoot-down, human remains and other types of objects appeared on the north shore of
Hokkaido is the list of islands of Japan by area, second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefectures of Japan, prefecture, making up its own list of regions of Japan, region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō fr ...
, Japan. Hokkaido is about below the southern tip of Sakhalin across the
La Pérouse Strait La Pérouse Strait (), or , is a strait dividing the southern part of the Russian island of Sakhalin from the northern part of the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, and connecting the Sea of Japan on the west with the Sea of Okhotsk on the east. ...
(the southern tip of Sakhalin is from Moneron Island which is west of Sakhalin). The ICAO concluded that these bodies, body parts, and objects were carried from Soviet waters to the shores of Hokkaido by the southerly current west of Sakhalin Island. All currents of the
Strait of Tartary Strait of Tartary or Gulf of Tartary (; ; ; ) is a strait in the Pacific Ocean dividing the Russian island of Sakhalin from mainland Asia (South-East Russia), connecting the Sea of Okhotsk ( Nevelskoy Strait) on the north with the Sea of Japan ...
relevant to Moneron Island flow to the north, except this southerly current between Moneron Island and Sakhalin Island. These human remains, including body parts, tissues, and two partial torsos, totaled 13. All were unidentifiable, but one partial torso was that of a Caucasian woman as indicated by auburn hair on a partial skull, and one partial body was of an Asian child (with glass embedded). There was no luggage recovered. Of the non-human remains that the Japanese recovered were various items including dentures, newspapers, seats, books, eight KAL paper cups, shoes, sandals, sneakers, a camera case, a "please fasten seat belt" sign, an oxygen mask, a handbag, a bottle of dishwashing fluid, several blouses, an identity card belonging to 25-year-old passenger Mary Jane Hendrie of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, and the business cards of passengers Kathy Brown-Spier and Mason Chang.Pearson, p. 235 These items generally came from the passenger cabin of the aircraft. None of the items found generally came from the cargo hold of the plane, such as suitcases, packing boxes, industrial machinery, instruments, and sports equipment.


Russian diver reports

In 1991, after the
collapse of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...
, the Russian newspaper ''
Izvestia ''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...
'' published a series of interviews with Soviet military personnel who had been involved in salvage operations to find and recover parts of the aircraft. After three days of searching using
trawlers Trawler may refer to: Boats * Fishing trawler, used for commercial fishing * Naval trawler Naval trawlers are vessels built along the lines of a fishing trawler but fitted out for naval purposes; they were widely used during the World War I, Fir ...
, side-scan sonar, and
diving bell A diving bell is a rigid chamber used to transport divers from the surface to depth and back in open water, usually for the purpose of performing underwater work. The most common types are the open-bottomed wet bell and the closed bell, which c ...
s, Soviet searchers located the aircraft wreckage at a depth of near Moneron Island. Since no human remains or luggage were found on the surface in the impact area, the divers expected to find the remains of passengers who had been trapped in the submerged wreckage of the aircraft on the seabed. When they visited the site two weeks after the shoot-down, they found that the wreckage was in small pieces, and found no bodies:
I had the idea that it would be intact. Well, perhaps a little banged up... The divers would go inside the aircraft and see everything there was to see. It was completely demolished, scattered about like kindling. The largest things we saw were the especially strong braces—they were about one and a half or two meters long and 50–60 centimeters wide. As for the rest—broken into tiny pieces...
According to ''Izvestia'', the divers had only ten encounters with passenger remains (tissues and body parts) in the debris area, including one partial torso.''World Wide Issues'', February 6, 1991, p. 21
''Tinro ll'' submersible Captain Mikhail Igorevich Girs' diary: Submergence 10 October. Aircraft pieces, wing spars, pieces of aircraft skin, wiring, and clothing. But—no people. The impression is that all of this has been dragged here by a trawl rather than falling down from the sky...
Vyacheslav Popov: "I will confess that we felt great relief when we found out that there were no bodies at the bottom. Not only were no bodies; there were also no suitcases or large bags. I did not miss a single dive. I have quite a clear impression: The aircraft was filled with garbage, but there were really no people there. Why? Usually when an aircraft crashes, even a small one... As a rule, there are suitcases and bags, or at least the handles of the suitcases."
Some civilian divers, whose first dive was on September 15, two weeks after the shoot-down, state that Soviet military divers and trawls had been at work before them:
Diver Vyacheslav Popov: "As we learned then, before us the trawlers had done some 'work' in the designated quadrant. It is hard to understand what sense the military saw in the trawling operation. First, drag everything haphazardly around the bottom by the trawls, and then send in the submersibles?...It is clear that things should have been done in the reverse order."
ICAO also interviewed a number of these divers for its 1993 report: "In addition to the scraps of metal, they observed personal items, such as clothing, documents, and wallets. Although some evidence of human remains was noticed by the divers, they found no bodies."


Political events


Initial Soviet denial

General Secretary
Yuri Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov ( – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from late 1982 until his death in 1984. He previously served as the List of Chairmen of t ...
, on the advice of Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov, but against the advice of the Foreign Ministry, initially decided not to make any admission of downing the airliner, on the premise that no one would find out or be able to prove otherwise.Oberdorfer, p. 51 Consequently the
TASS The Russian News Agency TASS, or simply TASS, is a Russian state-owned news agency founded in 1904. It is the largest Russian news agency and one of the largest news agencies worldwide. TASS is registered as a Federal State Unitary Enterpri ...
news agency reported twelve hours after the shoot-down only that an unidentified aircraft, flying without lights, had been intercepted by Soviet fighters after it violated Soviet airspace over Sakhalin. The aircraft had allegedly failed to respond to warnings and "continued its flight toward the Sea of Japan". Some commentators believe that the inept manner in which the political events were handled by the Soviet governmentDallin, p. 89 was affected by the failing health of Andropov, who was permanently hospitalised in late September or early October 1983 (Andropov died the following February). In a 2015 interview
Igor Kirillov Igor Leonidovich Kirillov (, 14 September 1932 – 29 October 2021) was a Soviet and Russian news presenter, announcer and actor. He was a news anchor for Soviet Central Television (CT USSR) and announcer for the CT USSR news program ''Vremy ...
, the senior Soviet news anchor said that he was initially given a printed TASS report to announce over the news on September 1, which included an "open and honest" admission that the plane was shot down by mistake (a wrong judgment call by the Far Eastern Air Defence Command). However, at the moment the opening credits of the ''
Vremya ''Vremya'' (, lit. "Time") is the main evening newscast in Russia, airing on Channel One Russia (Russian: , Pervy kanal) and previously on Programme One of the Central Television of the USSR (CT USSR, Russian: ). The programme has been on th ...
'' evening news programme rolled in, an editor ran in and snatched the sheet of paper from his hand, handing him another TASS report which was "completely opposite" to the first one and to the truth.


U.S. reaction and further developments

The shoot-down happened at a very tense time in the U.S.–Soviet relations during the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
. The U.S. adopted a strategy of releasing a substantial amount of hitherto highly classified
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
information in order to exploit a major propaganda advantage over the Soviet Union. Six hours after the plane was downed, the South Korean government announced that the plane had merely been forced to land abruptly by the Soviets and that all passengers and crew were safe. U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz held a press conference about the incident at 10:45 on September 1, during which he divulged some details of intercepted Soviet communications and denounced the actions of the Soviet Union.Daniloff, p. 294 On September 5, 1983, President Reagan condemned the shooting down of the airplane as the "Korean airline massacre", a "crime against humanity
hat A hat is a Headgear, head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorpor ...
must never be forgotten" and an "act of barbarism... ndinhuman brutality". The following day, the U.S. ambassador to the UN
Jeane Kirkpatrick Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick (née Jordan; November 19, 1926December 7, 2006) was an American diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a lon ...
delivered an audio-visual presentation in the
United Nations Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, an ...
, using audio tapes of the Soviet pilots' radio conversations and a map of Flight 007's path in depicting its shooting down. Following this presentation, TASS acknowledged for the first time that the aircraft had indeed been shot down after warnings were ignored. The Soviets challenged many of the facts presented by the U.S. and revealed the previously unknown presence of a USAF RC-135
surveillance aircraft Surveillance aircraft are aircraft used for surveillance. They are primarily operated by military forces and government agencies in roles including intelligence gathering, maritime patrol, battlefield and airspace surveillance, observation (e. ...
whose path had crossed that of KAL 007. On September 7, Japan and the United States jointly released a transcript of Soviet communications, intercepted by the listening post at
Wakkanai file:Wakkanai city office.JPG, 290px, Wakkanai City Hall file:Wakkanai shore.jpg, 290px, Shore of Wakkanai is a Cities of Japan, city located in Sōya Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. Wakkanai is the capital of Sōya Subprefecture. Situated approx ...
, to an emergency session of the
United Nations Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, an ...
. Reagan issued a
National Security Directive National security directives are presidential directives issued for the National Security Council (NSC). Starting with Harry Truman, every president since the founding of the National Security Council in 1947 has issued national security directi ...
stating that the Soviets were not to be let off the hook, and initiating "a major diplomatic effort to keep international and domestic attention focused on the Soviet action".Richelson, p. 385 The move was seen by the Soviet leadership as confirmation of the West's bad intentions. A high-level U.S.–Soviet
summit A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak (mountain peak), and zenith are synonymous. The term (mountain top) is generally used only for ...
, the first in nearly a year, was scheduled for September 8, 1983, in Madrid. The ShultzGromyko meeting went ahead but was overshadowed by the KAL 007 events. It ended acrimoniously, with Shultz stating: "Foreign Minister Gromyko's response to me today was even more unsatisfactory than the response he gave in public yesterday. I find it totally unacceptable." Reagan ordered additional restrictions on Aeroflot Soviet Airlines, including the closing of Aeroflot ticket offices in the United States. Reagan had previously set in motion restrictions on Aeroflot flying routes to and from the United States which took effect in January 1982. An emergency session of the
ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
was held in
Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
, Canada. On September 12, 1983, the Soviet Union used its
veto A veto is a legal power to unilaterally stop an official action. In the most typical case, a president (government title), president or monarch vetoes a bill (law), bill to stop it from becoming statutory law, law. In many countries, veto powe ...
to block a United Nations resolution condemning it for shooting down the aircraft. Shortly after the Soviet Union shot down KAL 007, the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, (PANYNJ; stylized, in logo since 2020, as Port Authority NY NJ) is a joint venture between the U.S. states of New York (state), New York and New Jersey, established in 1921 through an interstate c ...
, operating the commercial airports around New York City, denied Soviet aircraft landing rights, in violation of the
United Nations Charter The Charter of the United Nations is the foundational treaty of the United Nations (UN). It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the United Nations System, UN system, including its United Nations System#Six ...
that required the host nation to allow all member countries access to the UN. In reaction, TASS and some at the UN raised the question of whether the UN should move its
headquarters Headquarters (often referred to as HQ) notes the location where most or all of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. The term is used in a wide variety of situations, including private sector corporations, non-profits, mil ...
from the United States. Charles Lichenstein, acting U.S. permanent representative to the UN under Ambassador Kirkpatrick, responded, "We will put no impediment in your way. The members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset." Administration officials were quick to announce that Lichenstein was speaking only for himself. In the Cold War context of Operation RYAN, the Strategic Defence Initiative, Pershing II missile deployment in Europe, and the upcoming Exercise Able Archer, the Soviet Government perceived the incident with the South Korean airliner to be a portent of war. The Soviet hierarchy took the official line that KAL Flight 007 was on a spy mission, as it "flew deep into Soviet territory for several hundred kilometres iles without responding to signals and disobeying the orders of interceptor fighter planes". They claimed its purpose was to probe the air defences of highly sensitive Soviet military sites in the Kamchatka Peninsula and
Sakhalin Island Sakhalin ( rus, Сахали́н, p=səxɐˈlʲin) is an island in Northeast Asia. Its north coast lies off the southeastern coast of Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, while its southern tip lies north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. An islan ...
. The Soviet government expressed regret over the loss of life, but offered no apology and did not respond to demands for compensation.Johnson, p. 110 Instead, the Soviet Union blamed the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
for this "criminal, provocative act".Sputnik, ''The Truth and Lies about the South Korean Airliner'' In a comparative study of the two tragedies published in 1991, political scientist Robert Entman points out that with KAL 007, "the angle taken by the US media emphasised the moral bankruptcy and guilt of the perpetrating nation. With Iran Air 655, the frame de-emphasised guilt and focused on the complex problems of operating military high technology".


Investigations


NTSB

Since the aircraft had departed from U.S. soil and U.S. nationals had died in the incident, the
National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...
(NTSB) was legally required to investigate. On the morning of September 1, the NTSB chief in Alaska, James Michelangelo, received an order from the NTSB in Washington at the behest of the State Department requiring all documents relating to the NTSB investigation to be sent to Washington and notifying him that the State Department would now conduct the investigation. The U.S. State Department, after closing the NTSB investigation on the grounds that it was not an accident, pursued an ICAO investigation instead. Commentators such as Johnson point out that this action was illegal, and that in deferring the investigation to the ICAO, the Reagan administration effectively precluded any politically or militarily sensitive information from being
subpoena A subpoena (; also subpœna, supenna or subpena) or witness summons is a writ issued by a government agency, most often a court, to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of ...
ed that might have embarrassed the administration or contradicted its version of events. Unlike the NTSB, ICAO can subpoena neither persons nor documents and is dependent on the governments involved—in this incident, the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and South Korea—to supply evidence voluntarily.


Initial ICAO investigation (1983)

The
International Civil Aviation Organization The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...
(ICAO) had only one experience of investigation of an air disaster before the KAL 007 shoot-down. This was the incident of February 21, 1973, when Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by Israeli F-4 jets over the Sinai Peninsula. ICAO convention required the state in whose territory the incident had taken place (the Soviet Union) to conduct an investigation together with the country of registration (South Korea), the country whose air traffic control the aircraft was flying under (Japan), as well as the country of the aircraft's manufacturer (US). The ICAO investigation, led by Caj Frostell, did not have the authority to compel the states involved to hand over evidence, instead having to rely on what they voluntarily submitted. Consequently, the investigation did not have access to sensitive evidence such as radar data, intercepts, ATC tapes, or the
Flight Data Recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...
(FDR) and
Cockpit Voice Recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...
(CVR) (whose discovery the U.S.S.R. had kept secret). A number of simulations were conducted with the assistance of Boeing and Litton (the manufacturer of the navigation system). The ICAO released their report on December 2, 1983, which concluded that the violation of Soviet airspace was accidental: One of two explanations for the aircraft's deviation was that the
autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of a vehicle without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allow ...
had remained in HEADING hold instead of INS mode after departing
Anchorage Anchorage, officially the Municipality of Anchorage, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Alaska. With a population of 291,247 at the 2020 census, it contains nearly 40 percent of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolita ...
. They postulated that this inflight navigational error was caused by either the crew's failure to select INS mode or the inertial navigation not activating when selected because the aircraft was already too far off track. It was determined that the crew did not notice this error or subsequently perform navigational checks, which 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". The report included a statement by the Soviet Government claiming "no remains of the victims, the instruments or their components or the flight recorders have so far been discovered". This statement was subsequently shown to be untrue by
Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to ...
's release in 1993 of a November 1983 memo from
KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
head
Viktor Chebrikov Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov (; 27 April 1923 – 2 July 1999) was a Soviet public official and security administrator and head of the KGB from December 1982 to October 1988.Montgomery, Isobel (7 July 1999)Viktor Chebrikov: KGB chief who favoure ...
and Defence Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to Yuri Andropov. This memo stated, "In the third decade of October this year the equipment in question (the recorder of in-flight parameters and the recorder of voice communications by the flight crew with ground air traffic surveillance stations and between themselves) was brought aboard a search vessel and forwarded to Moscow by air for decoding and translation at the Air Force Scientific Research Institute." The Soviet Government statement would further be contradicted by Soviet civilian divers who later recalled that they viewed the wreckage of the aircraft on the bottom of the sea for the first time on September 15, two weeks after the plane had been shot down. Following the publication of the report, the ICAO adopted a resolution condemning the Soviet Union for the attack.Merrills, p. 61 Furthermore, the report led to a unanimous amendment in May 1984—though not coming into force until October 1, 1998—to the
Convention on International Civil Aviation The Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, established the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations charged with coordinating international air trav ...
that defined the use of force against civilian airliners in more detail. The amendment to section 3(d) reads in part: "The contracting States recognize that every State must refrain from resorting to the use of weapons against civil aircraft in flight and that, in case of interception, the lives of persons on board and the safety of aircraft must not be endangered."


U.S. Air Force radar data

It is customary for the Air Force to impound radar trackings involving possible litigation in cases of aviation accidents.Pearson, p. 309 In the civil litigation for damages, the
United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...
explained that the tapes from the Air Force radar installation at King Salmon, Alaska, pertinent to KAL 007's flight in the Bethel area had been destroyed and could therefore not be supplied to the plaintiffs. At first Justice Department lawyer Jan Van Flatern stated that they were destroyed 15 days after the shoot-down. Later, he said he had "misspoken" and changed the time of destruction to 30 hours after the event. A
Pentagon In geometry, a pentagon () is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple polygon, simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagon may be simple or list of self-intersecting polygons, self-intersecting. A self-intersecting ...
spokesman concurred, saying that the tapes are recycled for re-use from 24–30 hours afterward; the fate of KAL 007 was known inside this timeframe.


Interim developments

Hans Ephraimson-Abt, whose daughter Alice Ephraimson-Abt had died on the flight, chaired the ''American Association for Families of KAL 007 Victims''. He single-handedly pursued three U.S. administrations for answers about the flight, flying to Washington 250 times and meeting with 149
State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...
officials. Following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Ephraimson-Abt persuaded U.S. Senators
Ted Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts who served as a member of the United States Senate from 1962 to his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party and ...
,
Sam Nunn Samuel Augustus Nunn Jr. (born September 8, 1938) is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Georgia (1972–1997) as a member of the Democratic Party. After leaving Congress, Nunn co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initi ...
,
Carl Levin Carl Milton Levin (June 28, 1934 – July 29, 2021) was an American attorney and politician who served as a List of United States senators from Michigan, United States senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party (U ...
, and
Bill Bradley William Warren Bradley (born July 28, 1943) is an American politician and former professional basketball player. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he was a United States Senate, United States senator from New ...
to write to the Soviet President,
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
requesting information about the flight. ''
Glasnost ''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...
'' reforms in the same year brought about a relaxation of press censorship; consequently reports started to appear in the Soviet press suggesting that the Soviet military knew the location of the wreckage and had possession of the flight recorders. On December 10, 1991, Senator
Jesse Helms Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was an American politician. A leader in the Conservatism in the United States, conservative movement, he served as a senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. As chairman of the ...
of the
Committee on Foreign Relations The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the U.S. Senate charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. It is generally responsible for authorizing and overseeing foreign ai ...
, wrote to Boris Yeltsin requesting information concerning the survival of passengers and crew of KAL 007 including the fate of Congressman Larry McDonald. On June 17, 1992, President Yeltsin revealed that after the 1991 failed coup attempt, concerted attempts were made to locate Soviet-era documents relating to KAL 007. He mentioned the discovery of "a memorandum from K.G.B. to the Central Committee of the Communist Party," stating that a tragedy had taken place and adding that there are documents "which would clarify the entire picture." Yeltsin said the memo continued to say that "these documents are so well concealed that it is doubtful that our children will be able to find them." On September 11, 1992, Yeltsin officially acknowledged the existence of the recorders and promised to give the South Korean government a transcript of the flight recorder contents as found in KGB files. In October 1992, Hans Ephraimson-Abt led a delegation of families and U.S. State Department officials to Moscow at the invitation of President Yeltsin. During a state ceremony at St. Catherine's Hall in the
Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin (fortification), Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Mosco ...
, the KAL family delegation was handed a portfolio containing partial transcripts of the KAL 007 cockpit voice recorder, translated into Russian, and documents of the
Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. The term is also sometimes used to refer to similar organs in socialist and Islamist parties, such as the UK Labour Party's NEC or the Poli ...
pertaining to the tragedy. During an official visit to Seoul in November 1992 to improve bilateral relations, President Yeltsin handed the two recorder containers to Korean President
Roh Tae-woo Roh Tae-woo (, ; 4 December 1932 – 26 October 2021) was a South Korean army general and politician who served as the sixth president of South Korea from 1988 to 1993. In 1987, he became the first president to be directly elected under the cur ...
, but not the tapes themselves. The following month, the ICAO voted to reopen the KAL 007 investigations in order to take the newly released information into account. The tapes were handed to ICAO in Paris on January 8, 1993. Also handed over at the same time were tapes of the ground-to-air communications of the Soviet military. The tapes were transcribed by the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) in Paris in the presence of representatives from Japan, The Russian Federation, South Korea, and the United States. A 1993 official enquiry by the Russian Federation absolved the Soviet hierarchy of blame, determining that the incident was a case of mistaken identity.Pry, pp. 27–32 On May 28, 1993, the ICAO presented its second report to the
Secretary-General of the United Nations The secretary-general of the United Nations (UNSG or UNSECGEN) is the chief administrative officer of the United Nations and head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the United Nations System#Six principal organs, six principal organs of ...
.


Soviet memoranda

In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin disclosed five top-secret memos dating from a few weeks after the downing of KAL 007 in 1983.These memos were published in the Soviet news magazine,
Izvestia ''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...
#228, October 15, 1992, shortly after being made public by Yeltsin.
The memos contained Soviet communications (from KGB Chief
Viktor Chebrikov Viktor Mikhailovich Chebrikov (; 27 April 1923 – 2 July 1999) was a Soviet public official and security administrator and head of the KGB from December 1982 to October 1988.Montgomery, Isobel (7 July 1999)Viktor Chebrikov: KGB chief who favoure ...
and Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to General Secretary Yuri Andropov) that indicated that they knew the location of KAL 007's wreckage while they were simulating a search and harassing the American Navy; they had found the sought-after
cockpit voice recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...
on October 20, 1983 (50 days after the incident), and had decided to keep this knowledge secret, the reason being that the tapes could not unequivocally support their firmly held view that KAL 007's flight to Soviet territory was a deliberately planned intelligence mission. The third memo acknowledges that analysis of the recorder tapes showed no evidence of the Soviet interceptor attempting to contact KAL 007 via radio nor any indication that the KAL 007 had been given warning shots.
However in case the flight recorders shall become available to the western countries their data may be used for Confirmation of no attempt by the intercepting aircraft to establish radio contact with the intruder plane on 121.5 MHz and no tracers warning shots in the last section of the flight
That the Soviet search was simulated (while they knew the wreckage lay elsewhere) also is suggested by the article of Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archives of Recent History, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the airplane's shoot-down. Commenting on the Soviet and American searches: "Since the U.S.S.R., for natural reasons, knew better where the Boeing had been downed...it was very problematical to retrieve anything, especially as the U.S.S.R. was not particularly interested".


Revised ICAO report (1993)

On November 18, 1992, Russian President
Boris Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to ...
, in a goodwill gesture to South Korea during a visit to Seoul to ratify a new
treaty A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between sovereign states and/or international organizations that is governed by international law. A treaty may also be known as an international agreement, protocol, covenant, convention ...
, released both the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of KAL 007. Initial South Korean research showed the FDR to be empty and the CVR to have an unintelligible copy. The Russians then released the recordings to the ICAO Secretary General. The ICAO report continued to support the initial assertion that KAL 007 accidentally flew in Soviet airspace, after listening to the flight crew's conversations recorded by the CVR, and confirming that either the aircraft had flown on a constant magnetic heading instead of activating the INS and following its assigned waypoints, or, if it had activated the INS, it had been activated when the aircraft had already deviated beyond the 7-
nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude at t ...
Desired Track Envelope within which the waypoints would have been captured. In addition, the Russian Federation released "Transcript of Communications. U.S.S.R. Air Defence Command Centres on Sakhalin Island" transcripts to ICAO—this new evidence triggered the revised ICAO report in 1993 "The Report of the Completion of the Fact-Finding Investigation", and is appended to it. These transcripts (of two reels of tape, each containing multiple tracks) are time specified, some to the second, of the communications between the various command posts and other military facilities on Sakhalin from the time of the initial orders for the shoot-down and then through the stalking of KAL 007 by Major Osipovich in his Su-15 interceptor, the attack as seen and commented on by General Kornukov, Commander of Sokol Air Base, down the ranks to the Combat Controller Captain Titovnin.ICAO '93, Information Paper No. 1, pp. 48–208 The transcripts include the post-attack flight of KAL 007 until it had reached Moneron Island, the descent of KAL 007 over Moneron, the initial Soviet SAR missions to Moneron, the futile search of the support interceptors for KAL 007 on the water, and ending with the debriefing of Osipovich on return to base. Some of the communications are the telephone conversations between superior officers and subordinates and involve commands to them, while other communications involve the recorded responses to what was then being viewed on radar tracking KAL 007. These multi-track communications from various command posts telecommunicating at the same minute and seconds as other command posts were communicating provide a "composite" picture of what was taking place. The data from the CVR and the FDR revealed that the recordings broke off after the first minute and 44 seconds of KAL 007's post-missile detonation 12 minute flight. The remaining minutes of the flight would be supplied by the Russia 1992 submission to ICAO of the real-time Soviet military communication of the shoot-down and aftermath. The fact that both recorder tapes stopped exactly at the same time 1 minute and 44 seconds after missile detonation (18:38:02 UTC) without the tape portions for the more than 10 minutes of KAL 007's post-detonation flight before it descended below radar tracking (18:38 UTC) finds no explanation in the ICAO analysis: "It could not be established why both flight recorders simultaneously ceased to operate 104 seconds after the attack. The power supply cables were fed to the rear of the aircraft in raceways on opposite sides of the fuselage until they came together behind the two recorders."


Passenger pain and suffering

Passenger
pain and suffering Pain and suffering is the legal term for the physical and emotional stress caused from an injury (see also pain and suffering). Some damages that might come under this category would be: aches, temporary and permanent limitations on activity, ...
was an important factor in determining the level of compensation that was paid by Korean Air Lines. Fragments from the
proximity fuse A Proximity Fuse (also VT fuse or "variable time fuze") is a fuse that detonates an explosive device automatically when it approaches within a certain distance of its target. Proximity fuses are designed for elusive military targets such as air ...
d R-98 medium range air-to-air missile exploding behind the tail caused punctures to the pressurized passenger cabin. When one of the flight crew radioed Tokyo Area Control one minute and two seconds after missile detonation his breathing was already "accentuated", indicating to ICAO analysts that he was speaking through the microphone located in his oxygen mask, "Korean Air 007 ah... We are... Rapid compressions. Descend to 10,000."ICAO '93, p. 35 Two expert witnesses testified at a trial before then Magistrate Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. They addressed the issue of pre-death pain and suffering. Captain James McIntyre, an experienced Boeing 747 pilot, and aircraft accident investigator, testified that shrapnel from the missile caused rapid decompression of the cabin, but left the passengers sufficient time to don oxygen masks: "McIntyre testified that, based upon his estimate of the extent of damage the aircraft sustained, all passengers survived the initial impact of the shrapnel from the missile explosion. In McIntyre's expert opinion, at least 12 minutes elapsed between the impact of the shrapnel and the crash of the plane, and the passengers remained conscious throughout."


Alternate theories

Flight 007 has been the subject of ongoing controversy and has spawned a number of alternate theories.Knight, p. 381 Many of these are based on the suppression of evidence such as the flight data recorders, unexplained details such as the role of a USAF RC-135 surveillance aircraft, the untimely destruction of the U.S. Air Force's King Salmon radar data, Cold War
disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...
and propaganda and Gennadiy Osipovich's (the Soviet fighter pilot who shot down flight 007) statement that although he knew the plane was a civilian aircraft, he suspected that it could have been used as a spy plane. American historian and professor Alexander Dallin in his 1985 book concluded that no hypothesis of inadvertent intrusion of the Boeing 747 into the Soviet prohibited airspace survives scrutiny, albeit there is no direct evidence of deliberate intrusion either.


Aftermath

Two television movies were produced about the incident; both films were produced before the fall of the Soviet Union allowed access to archives. '' Shootdown'' (1988), a telemovie starring
Angela Lansbury Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury (October 16, 1925 – October 11, 2022) was an Irish-British and American actress, producer, and singer. In a career spanning 80 years, she played various roles on stage and screen. Among her numerous accolades wer ...
,
John Cullum John Cullum (born March 2, 1930) is an American actor and singer. He has appeared in many stage musicals and dramas, including '' Shenandoah'' (1975) and '' On the Twentieth Century'' (1978), winning the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in ...
, 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 U.S. and Soviet governments. Then the British
Granada Television ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV (TV network), ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire on weekdays only, as ABC Weekend TV, ...
documentary drama '' Coded Hostile'', screened on ITV on September 7, 1989, detailed the U.S. 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. Written by Brian Phelan and directed by David Darlow, it starred Michael Murphy,
Michael Moriarty Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941) is an American-Canadian actor. He received an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for his role as a Nazi SS officer in the 1978 miniseries ''Holocaust'' and a Tony Award in 1974 for his performance in the ...
, and
Chris Sarandon Christopher Sarandon (; born July 24, 1942) is an American actor. He is well known for playing Jerry Dandrige in '' Fright Night'' (1985), Prince Humperdinck in '' The Princess Bride'' (1987), Detective Mike Norris in '' Child's Play'' (1988), a ...
. An updated version was screened by
Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
in the UK on August 31, 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation. On 26 September 1983, a nuclear false alarm incident occurred, which almost led to nuclear war. In the aftermath of the airliner shootdown, the Soviet military system was geared to detect a first strike and immediately retaliate, and an optical illusion led the early warning system to malfunction and trigger a false alarm.


Airway closed

The FAA temporarily closed
Airway The respiratory tract is the subdivision of the respiratory system involved with the process of conducting air to the alveoli for the purposes of gas exchange in mammals. The respiratory tract is lined with respiratory epithelium as respiratory ...
R-20, the air corridor that Korean Air Flight 007 was meant to follow, on September 2. Airlines fiercely resisted the closure of this popular route, the shortest of five corridors between Alaska and Eastern Asia. It was therefore reopened on October 2 after safety and navigational aids were checked. NATO had decided, under the impetus of the Reagan administration, to deploy Pershing II and Gryphon cruise missiles in
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
. This deployment would have placed missiles just 6–10 minutes striking distance from Moscow. Support for the deployment was wavering and it looked doubtful that it would be carried out. When the Soviet Union shot down Flight 007, the U.S. was able to galvanize enough support at home and abroad to enable the deployment to go ahead. The unprecedented disclosure of the communications intercepted by the United States and Japan revealed a considerable amount of information about their
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
systems and capabilities.
National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...
director Lincoln D. Faurer commented: "...as a result of the Korean Air Lines affair, you have already heard more about my business in the past two weeks than I would desire... For the most part, this has not been a matter of unwelcome leaks. It is the result of a conscious, responsible decision to address an otherwise unbelievable horror." Changes that the Soviets subsequently made to their
code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...
s and frequencies reduced the effectiveness of this monitoring by 60%. The U.S. KAL 007 Victims' Association, under the leadership of Hans Ephraimson-Abt, successfully lobbied
U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...
and the airline industry to accept an agreement that would ensure that future victims of airline incidents would be compensated quickly and fairly by increasing compensation and lowering the burden of proof of airliner misconduct. This legislation has had far-reaching effects for the victims of subsequent aircraft disasters. The U.S. decided to utilize military
radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...
s to extend air traffic control radar coverage from out from Anchorage.These radars had been used in 1968 to alert Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253A in a similar situation. The FAA also established a secondary radar system (ATCBI-5) on Saint Paul Island. In 1986, the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union set up a joint air traffic control system to monitor aircraft over the North Pacific, thereby giving the Soviet Union formal responsibility to monitor civilian air traffic, and setting up direct communication links between the controllers of the three countries. On September 16, 1983 a White House press secretary read a statement on the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. It is announced that the GPS system should be available for civil aviation with the planned completion in 1988. This communication was sometimes understood as the release of the military project for the general public. However, the GPS system was developed from the start for military and civilian navigation. The regular air route between Seoul and Moscow started in April 1990 as the result of the Nordpolitik policy of South Korea, operated by
Aeroflot PJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines (, ), commonly known as Aeroflot ( or ; , , ), is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its hub being Sheremetyevo Interna ...
and
Korean Air Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd. (KAL; ) is the flag carrier of South Korea and its largest airline based on fleet size, international destinations, and international flights. It is owned by the Hanjin, Hanjin Group. The present-day Korean Air tra ...
; meanwhile, all 9 of Korean Air's European routes would start passing through Soviet airspace. This was the first time Korean Air aircraft was officially permitted to pass through Soviet airspace. Alvin Snyder, the director of worldwide television for the
United States Information Agency The United States Information Agency (USIA) was a United States government agency devoted to propaganda which operated from 1953 to 1999. Previously existing United States Information Service (USIS) posts operating out of U.S. embassies wor ...
, was the producer of the video shown to the U.N. Security Council on September 6, 1983."Flight 007: The rest of the story", ''The Washington Post'', September 1, 1996. In an article in ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' on September 1, 1996, he stated that he had been given only limited access to the transcripts of the Soviet communication when he produced the video in 1983. When he received full insight into the Soviet transmissions in 1993, he says he realized that: "The Russians (sic) believed the plane to be an RC-135 reconnaissance plane" and that "Osipovich (the Soviet fighter pilot) could not identify the plane" and "That he fired warning cannon shots and tipped his wings, an international signal to force the plane to land". Some of these statements were contradicted by the pilot in an interview with ''The New York Times'', in which he confirmed that he did fire warning shots, but that they would not have been visible as they were not tracers. In a March 15, 2001, interview, Valery Kamensky, then Commander of the Soviet Far East Military District Air Defense Force and direct superior to General Kornukov, opined that such a shoot-down of a civilian passenger plane could not happen again in view of the changing political conditions and alliances. In this interview, Kamensky stated, "It is still a mystery what happened to the bodies of the crew and passengers on the plane. According to one theory, right after the detonation of the rocket, the nose and tail section of the jumbo fell off and the mid-fuselage became a sort of wind tunnel so the people were swept through it and scattered over the surface of the ocean. Yet in this case, some of the bodies were to have been found during the search operations in the area. The question of what actually happened to the people has not been given a distinct answer." On September 1, 2003, commenting on the 20th anniversary of the shoot-down article in RIA Novosti, Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archives of Recent History, disclosed that the Soviet naval forces in the search for KAL 007 in international waters, already "knew better where thad been downed" while conducting their search and that nothing was found "especially as the USSR was not particularly interested."
Korean Air Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd. (KAL; ) is the flag carrier of South Korea and its largest airline based on fleet size, international destinations, and international flights. It is owned by the Hanjin, Hanjin Group. The present-day Korean Air tra ...
still flies from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to
Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
. However, the flight no longer stops at Anchorage or flies to
Gimpo International Airport Gimpo International Airport , sometimes referred to as Seoul–Gimpo International Airport but formerly rendered in English as Kimpo International Airport, is located in the far western end of Seoul, some west of the Jung District, Seoul, cen ...
as it now flies directly to
Incheon International Airport Incheon International Airport is the main international airport serving Seoul, the capital of South Korea. It is also one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. This airport opened for business on 29 March 2001, to replace the old ...
. Flight number 007 has been retired since, using flight numbers for 3 separate flights as 82, 86 and 250. , the separate flights are being served using Boeing 777F for flight 250 as a cargo flight, a Boeing 747-8I for flight 86 and a
Airbus A380 The Airbus A380 is a very large wide-body airliner, developed and produced by Airbus until 2021. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and the only full-length double-deck jet airliner. Airbus studies started in 1988, and the pr ...
for flight 82.


In popular culture

The American science fiction television drama series ''For All Mankind'', referenced the flight in season 2, episode 7, by adding
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
Administrator Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...
Thomas O. Paine as a passenger on the flight. Characters suggest various explanations for the downing, including the spy plane theory (as the plane was flying over the launch site of Buran in the series), or alternatively positioning him as the root target that led to the downing of the flight, in the show's alternate depiction of how the
Space Race The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between t ...
could have gone.
Lee Greenwood Melvin Lee Greenwood (born October 27, 1942) is an American country music singer. Active since 1962, he won a Grammy Awards, Grammy Award and he has charted 33 singles on the Hot Country Songs with seven singles reaching the number one. He has ...
wrote the song " God Bless the USA" in response to his feelings about the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. Greenwood stated in the book ''God Bless the USA'' (written by himself and Gwen McLin) that the song's lyrics flowed naturally from the music as an honest reflection of his pride to be American. In November 1983,
KGO-TV KGO-TV (channel 7) is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been owned and operated by the American Broadcasting Company, ABC television network through its ABC Owne ...
in San Francisco aired an advertisement for an upcoming news special report titled "Green Street Reds", about suspicious activities at the Soviet consulate. In the ad, they depicted
Santa Claus Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or Santa) is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Chris ...
and his reindeer being shot down by a Soviet missile. The advertisement was produced by Richard Williams Animation. Angry parents complained to KGO about the poor impression the image of Santa's death made upon young children. In 1984, a song about Flight 007 was featured on the
Gary Moore Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 19526 February 2011) was a Northern Irish musician. Over the course of his career, he played in various groups and performed a range of music including blues, blues rock, hard rock, Heavy metal music, heavy ...
album ''
Victims of the Future ''Victims of the Future'' is the fourth solo studio album by Northern Irish guitarist Gary Moore, released on 30 January 1984. It was the first album to feature former UFO guitarist/ keyboardist Neil Carter and bassist Bob Daisley. It was also ...
'' under the title "Murder in the Skies". In 1989, HBO released the film '' Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy'', with Michael Moriarty, Michael Murphy, Chris Sarandon, and Harris Yulin, about the case of Korean Air Lines flight 007. The disaster was referenced several times in the 1991 thriller film '' A Kiss Before Dying.'' The story of the disaster was featured on the ninth season of
Cineflix Cineflix Media is a Canadian global media production and distribution company. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, it has branches in Toronto, New York City, London, and Dublin. Subsidiaries include United Kingdom-based Cineflix Rights, ...
television show ''
Mayday Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organiz ...
'' in the episode entitled "Target Is Destroyed" (S09E05). The shootdown was depicted in the 2024 biographical film '' Reagan''. In 1984, the italian punk band CCCP - Fedeli alla linea released their first EP, " Ortodossia", containing the track "Spara Jurij" related to the KAL007 tragedy. The title (meaning "Yuri, shoot") and lyrics refers to
Yuri Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov ( – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from late 1982 until his death in 1984. He previously served as the List of Chairmen of t ...
, at time leader of the Soviet Union, the man who gave the order of tearing down the civil airplane.


See also

* Cold War (1979–85) * History of the Soviet Union (1982–91) * Korean Air Lines Flight 902 *
List of airliner shootdown incidents Airliner shootdown incidents have occurred since at least the 1930s, either intentionally or by accident. This chronological list shows instances of airliners being brought down by gunfire or missile attacksincluding during wartimerather than by Ti ...
* List of United States Congress members killed or wounded in office * Notable decompression accidents and incidents * Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 *
Iran Air Flight 655 Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by , a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air ...
*
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a Buk missile system, Bu ...
* Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 * Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 * Kaleva (airplane) *
1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident On 26 September 1983, during the Cold War, the Soviet nuclear early warning system Oko reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from the United States. These missile attack warnings were s ...
, which happened three weeks later.


Footnotes


Notes


References


Books

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Journals

* * * * * * * * * * * *


Online sources

* * This article was adapted from a book chapter, entitled "The Crash of Korean Air Lines Flight 007," which appeared in Degani, A. (2004). Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001. New York: St. Martin's Press (Palgrave-Macmillan) * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * Corcoran, Farrel. "KAL 007 and the evil empire: Mediated disaster and forms of rationalization." ''Critical Studies in Media Communication'' 3.3 (1986): 297–316. * * *Maier, Timothy (April 17, 2001)
"KAL 007 Mystery."
''Insight on the News''. * Morgan, Craig A. "The Downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007." ''Yale Journal of International Law'' 11 (1985): 231
online
* * * * * *
Soviet Air Force Transcripts
Airliners.net * * * * * *
FBI files on KAL 007
hosted at the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
*


External links

* {{Authority control 1983 controversies 1983 disasters in Oceania 1983 in international relations 1983 in military history 1983 in South Korea 1983 in the Soviet Union 1983 in the United States 20th-century aircraft shootdown incidents Accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 747 Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Airliner shootdown incidents involving combat aircraft Aviation accidents and incidents in 1983 20th-century aviation accidents and incidents in Russia Aviation accidents and incidents in the Pacific Ocean Aviation accidents and incidents in the Soviet Union
007 The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...
Marine salvage operations Massacres in the Soviet Union Mass murder in 1983 Murder in the Soviet Union Military scandals September 1983 in the Soviet Union South Korea–Soviet Union relations Soviet Union–United States relations Transport in Sakhalin Oblast Violations of Soviet airspace War scare