On the night of August 31 to September 1, 1983, a South Korean Boeing 747 airliner was shot down over Sakhalin Island. For fourteen minutes, the remains of an aircraft, 269 passengers and crew members fell from a height of 11 thousand meters. In those moments, the whole world approached the brink of disaster.
The plane that disappeared from the radar screens, making a regular flight on the route New York - Seoul, did not immediately cause serious concern to Japanese air traffic controllers, who were expecting it to fly over their territory at seven in the morning. At first, they thought it was a temporary glitch, that soon everything would be fine and in a minute or two the Boeing would appear on the screens again. When time passed, and he still did not appear on the screens, the Japanese decided that the plane had deviated greatly from the course. And if so, then he probably landed. But where, on whose territory? And why weren't there any signals from him?
About a day passed in agonizing anticipation, during which no signals were received. The assumptions were very different: all four engines failed at once and the plane fell into the sea? But why were there no signals? No, it couldn't have happened. They waited for the morning.
And in the morning, like a bolt from the blue, the speech of US Secretary of State George Shultz sounded on the radio, shocking everyone. He announced that a KAL-007 passenger plane of a South Korean airline was shot down by air-to-air missiles fired from a Soviet fighter-interceptor as a result of analysis of data obtained by American computers. Now no one doubted that the irreparable had happened.
The tragedy over the Sea of Japan immediately caused a storm of indignation in the West, passions in the international arena heated to the limit, although no one really could understand how this could happen. Foreign television, radio stations, and then newspapers vied with each other to express a variety of versions, in particular, those that the liner could have been hijacked by terrorists or there was an explosion on it. The most zealous of them called for a campaign against the Reds and called for revenge. But at the same time, the main questions remained unanswered: why did the passenger plane, equipped with modern navigation devices, deviate from the set course and invade the airspace of the Soviet Union? Why didn't he respond to the signals from the Soviet interceptor fighter? Why were the fatal shots fired?
The Soviet side was silent. And only two days after the tragedy, a TASS statement was made. It claimed that the unidentified plane had grossly violated the state border and invaded the USSR airspace to great depths. At the same time, the interceptor fired warning shots, but the plane did not react to them. In the same statement, there were hints that, obviously, the flight was carried out under the leadership of the Americans for espionage purposes. Minister of Foreign Affairs A. Gromyko, who spoke, confirmed that the Soviet territory and the borders of the Soviet Union are sacred and inviolable. Anyone who resorts to provocations of this kind should know that they will be held accountable for their actions.
At this difficult moment, both the Russians and the Americans urgently set about searching for a "black box", the transcripts of the records of which could clarify what had happened. The sea was stormy, and they could not find the "black box". Only scattered pieces of wood, plastic sheathing, and human remains that defied any identification floated in the waves.
Eight days later, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Ministry of Defense, spoke on television with explanations. He admitted that Soviet fighters "stopped" the airliner with two air-to-air missiles and accused the South Korean plane of spying for the United States. However, all these versions were rejected by the international community as untenable. A Boeing 747 passenger plane, flying at high altitude at night, could not gather any useful information. The US representative to the UN, Jean Kirkpatrick, spoke out unequivocally that civilized countries do not recognize aircraft deviations from the course as a crime for which the death penalty is imposed.
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And yet, despite the menacing speeches of politicians, diplomats and the military, who exacerbated the situation to the limit, considerations of a higher order won out. Nobody wanted the incident to turn into an open confrontation between the two great powers. Eleven Western states, although they agreed with the US proposal to stop air links with the Soviet Union, but only for two months. Passions gradually faded, and world public opinion soon changed from anger to mercy. Both sides tried to figure out what happened.
Now, almost sixteen years later, one can almost thoroughly explain the situation in which the South Korean plane found itself. The conclusion that suggests itself after reviewing the available information is not encouraging: not only a chain of fatal circumstances and errors both in the operation of on-board computers and in the actions of ground controllers and pilots of the Boeing itself could lead to the fact that no one noticed a deviation from the course.
So, in 1997, one of the former high-ranking officials of the Japanese military intelligence admitted that the South Korean plane was carrying out the task of the American special services and its rejection was not a mistake of navigation devices or dispatchers, but an obvious attempt to get into Soviet airspace in order to activate the Soviet system air defense and detect radar stations. All American reconnaissance aircraft that periodically violated Soviet airspace were forced to return to their route. They did not manage to detect the USSR air defense system, which did not present itself in any way. The Americans hoped that this task would be best performed by a passenger plane, which hardly anyone would dare to shoot down. However, everything turned out quite differently.
Having departed from the airport of the American city of Anchorage in Alaska, the Boeing headed first to the Aleutian Islands. Four hours later, during a radio contact with Tokyo, the Boeing's radio operator announced the advance towards Seoul. At 05.07 a.m. local time, the aircraft reported that they had passed the checkpoint. This is how the first erroneous message was recorded. At that moment, the airliner had already deviated from its course by several tens of kilometers and was over the territory of Kamchatka. About an hour later, the plane asked Tokyo for permission to rise to an altitude of eleven thousand meters. Permission was granted. And at the same time, neither Tokyo nor Boeing again recorded that the deviation from the course had already reached 181 kilometers and the car flew over Sakhalin Island. There were only a few minutes left before the tragedy began.
At this time on the ground frantically deciding what to do with the alien plane that had invaded the airspace. For two and a half hours, Soviet military air traffic controllers watched the strange flight along the USSR border of an unidentified object. And as soon as it appeared over the territory of Kamchatka, four MiG-23 and Su-15 planes took off into the sky. In the beginning, their task was to approach the stranger and try to force him to land. But the liner was too high, and it did not react to signals. For Soviet military pilots, the problem was that their interceptor aircraft could stay in the air for about an hour, for a longer time there was not enough fuel.
So, the pilot of the Su-15, approaching the airliner, conveyed to the ground that he saw the lights of the aircraft flashing. The silhouette of the giant white Boeing, illuminated by a crescent moon, stood out quite clearly against the dark sky. The Soviet fighter sent a request - "friend or foe" (IFF), but there was no response to it either. The fact is that such a signal and at such a frequency could only be received by a Soviet plane.
Before leaving the airspace of the USSR, the stranger had a few seconds. The interceptor was running out of fuel in the tanks, it was time to return to base. This meant that the stranger could leave. His departure threatened not only with serious troubles from the local command.
Now you can bring a recording of the conversation between the pilot of the Soviet interceptor aircraft and the ground. This recording was made by Japanese air traffic controllers, and they also decoded it.
13/18/05 - I see it visually and on the screen.
18.13.26 - Target does not respond to request.
18.13.40 - He switched on the weapon.
19.19.02 - I'm going to approach the target.
18.19.08 - They don't see me.
18.20.49 - I fire from a cannon.
18.23.37 - Now I'll try with rockets.
18.26.20 - Launched.
18.26.22 - Target destroyed.
During a visit to Seoul in November 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin admitted that the actions of the Soviet military command were wrong and expressed deep regret over the tragedy that was taking place over Sakhalin.
From the book: "HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS". N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev
