A Brief History
On September 1, 1983, a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 scrambled to intercept an airplane that had violated Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula. Suspecting the jet liner was actually a U.S. spy plane, the Soviet fighter fired 2 air-to-air missiles, easily shooting down the lumbering commercial airliner that was flying from New York City to Seoul, Korea via Anchorage, Alaska.
Digging Deeper
Soviet officials at first denied involvement in the shootdown. Then they claimed the fighter had first called the airliner on the radio before firing warning shots with tracer ammunition. Years later, when the Soviet Union dissolved, more complete information about the incident finally became public. It was revealed that no attempt at radio contact had been made and that no warning shots had been fired.
The pilot of the Soviet interceptor expressed no regret when interviewed, claiming he and the USSR had a legitimate right to shoot the airliner down as any jetliner might easily have been converted for reconnaissance use by the U.S. military. The fighter pilot had killed 269 innocent people (including a U.S. congressman), but this apparently meant nothing to him.
With a U.S. electronic spy plane not far from the area where the 747 was shot down, speculation that the Soviets thought they were shooting down a USAF 707 circulated as did speculation about whether or not the U.S. had somehow tricked the Soviets into shooting down the wrong plane. Was the giant airliner purposely sacrificed by the U.S. to achieve a propaganda coup? Or, was the incident just a tragic mistake of the Cold War? Conspiracy theories have abounded ever since, and debate continues to this day.
Another interesting theory is that Korean Air Lines Flight 007 might have been drawn off course by the Soviets by electronic and magnetic means. The Soviets had already repeatedly done or tried to do so with American military planes.
What we do know is that the missiles sent shrapnel through the airliner, piercing the body of the 747 and cutting the hydraulic controls, resulting in rapid decompression. It is likely that most of the crew and passengers were not killed directly by the missiles and that many if not all of them were alive for the terrifying 12 minutes or so it took the plane to crash into the Sea of Japan from that high altitude.
The shocking barbarism of intentionally shooting down a civilian airliner led to a sharp increase in Cold War tensions and anti-Soviet feeling, allowing President Ronald Reagan to go ahead with military programs such as basing nuclear-armed Pershing II missiles in Germany.
We may never know why this incident happened, but we do know commercial airliners have been shot down before KAL 007 and even after. In 1988 a U.S. warship shot down an Iranian Airbus A300, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard. In 2014, separatists in the Ukraine used a surface-to-air missile that had been supplied by the Russians to shoot down a Malaysian airliner, also killing everyone aboard.
Question for students (and subscribers): What can be done to prevent these tragedies? If you have an idea, share it with us in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Pearson, David E. Kal 007-The Cover Up. Summit Books, 1987.
