Then, 35 years ago, the Western media launched a hysterical anti-Soviet campaign. The leaders, of course, were the American ones. Indeed, have you ever seen a case - the air defense forces sent to the next world peaceful passengers of a civilian airliner! We are talking about the tragedy of South Korea's Boeing 747 of Korean Airlines, flight KE007. In the fall of 1983, he was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. All responsibility for this was placed on the Soviet air defense forces.
It happened in the early morning of September 1, 1983. A South Korean plane, without any objective reason, invaded the airspace of the USSR and, not responding to the requests of our pevoshniks, and then to direct threats, flew over Kamchatka and went to Sakhalin Island. Interceptor fighters were raised into the air with a combat mission to land the intruder. But the Boeing crew continued to ignore the demands of the Soviet side. At 03:00, rockets were launched at the plane, one of which shot down the liner, and it fell into the sea near Moneron Island. This version passed as the only correct one.
But 7 years passed, and the Parisian newspaper Le Monde came out with sensational material. The article argued in evidence that the Korean airliner was shot down by … the Americans.
How it was
Flight KE007 was operated long ago. This is not the first time the South Korean Boeing has performed it. The crew had no reason to change the route that connected the American city of Anchorage (Alaska) with Seoul. It was believed that then, on September 1, 1983, the plane deliberately deviated from the course for provocative reasons, nudged by the US special services.
The governments of Japan and South Korea expressed an angry protest to the Soviet Union. Many countries have boycotted Aeroflot, which has led to a sharp drop in ticket sales. We have suffered colossal losses. The Soviet authorities then “washed up” and kept silent. Why? Unknown.
But here's what's interesting: even at that time, there were reports in the press about the presence of three more aircraft in the area of the tragedy. And the military. And the very behavior of the Boeing crew was more than strange. It turned out that the South Korean was accompanied (precisely led, since negotiations between civilian and military pilots were recorded) by American Air Force planes. These were: the RC-135U radio reconnaissance aircraft (converted from the passenger Boeing-707), the SR-71 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and the EF-111F radar warfare aircraft.
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In addition to them in the Sea of Japan, flight KE007 and the "support group" were met and led by the American warships "Badger" and "Elliot". A reconnaissance satellite hovered over this entire imposing company in space. Again, American. Isn't it a strange "coincidence"? It turns out that the American passenger airliner was used as bait to anger our air defense forces in the area. US intelligence, apparently, wanted to identify Soviet military air defense targets in this way. The goal is clear, but the price! The Americans simply framed 269 civilians who, in complete ignorance, wanted to safely get to Seoul.
This is what experts think today.
Scandal
In early 1990, the French newspaper Le Monde conducted its own investigation and in the spring of the same year reported its results. The journalists brought in very competent people as independent consultants: former US Air Force pilot Brenom, retired diplomat Keppel and members of the Action Fund for Constitutional Government. They carefully studied the documents and found that the Soviet missile really "overwhelmed" the plane, but not the civilian Boeing-747, but the military RC-135U (Boeing-707). It turned out that after firing off the missiles, the South Korean … continued on his way! The records of the negotiations of the crew of flight KE007 with Seoul and Korean Airlines aircraft were found at 03:17 and later, at 03:44. But "Boeing-747" should have been shot down, in the opinion of the outraged world community, at 03:00!
The commission also found that the Russians had shot down two other US Air Force warplanes. When Soviet missiles began to shoot down plane after plane, the Americans decided that it was necessary to respond "with dignity", but in the confusion of the air battle, due to cloudiness and poor visibility, they hurried and shot down the Korean. And this terrible event happened not near Moneron Island, as officially reported (RC-135U sank there), but in the Tsugaru Strait (Sangarsky) between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, that is, according to all calculations, the civil liner lived for at least 50 minutes … The remains of the aircraft are now problematic to lift from the bottom.
On American warships, a combat alert was declared and anti-aircraft missiles were aimed at Russian interceptor aircraft. But who exactly gave the order for live-fire still remains a mystery. Apparently, the Pentagon has something to hide. The mistake of the hasty military was kept silent, and even provoked a dirty slanderous campaign in the media.
The findings of the independent commission were banned from publishing in the American press.
And this is not an isolated case. In exactly the same scenario, in the Persian Gulf, the American cruiser Vincennes "mistakenly" shot down an Iranian airbus A300B on July 3, 1988. There, all attempts to hide the truth have failed. I had to apologize …
Analogy
This happened in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980. The US Mediterranean fleet, as it became a habit, was urgently deployed to the conflict area and intervened in the course of hostilities as a peacekeeper and international arbiter, although the United States was not involved in this. But in the Persian Gulf region, oil, who would refuse such a tasty morsel?
By the end of the 1980s, the preponderance was on the side of Iran, whose coastal artillery and fleet were successfully sinking oil tankers and warships of the enemy and his partners. On Sunday, July 3, 1988, the American cruiser Vincennes, with escort frigates Montgomery and John X. Sider, patrolled the area of combat. At 10:00 local time, radars spotted three missile boats of the Iranian Navy, which were going to intercept the Danish tanker Karoma Maersk and began shelling on the move.
"Montgomery" rushed to the aid of the Dane and opened fire on Iranian military courts, then "Vincennes" entered the battle. At the same moment, Captain William Rogers was reported that a certain plane took off from the Tehran airport (note, civilian) and was moving towards the cruiser. For some reason, the Americans did not identify the plane, but immediately came to the conclusion that it was a military vehicle that was in a hurry to rescue Iranian missile boats.
At 10:49 a.m. the Airbus A300B approached the American. Rogers requested the aircraft and alerted the crew of a possible missile attack. There was no answer. In the meantime, the direction finders "accurately" identified the model of the "combat vehicle" - the F-14 Tomcat bomber. Rogers gave the order to prepare for firing at an aerial target. The wreckage of a passenger airliner crashed into the sea. 290 people aboard the A300B died in the air.
A scandal was brewing. Not only was a civilian plane shot down, but the American sailors showed their complete incompetence.
The CIA and the Pentagon's military intelligence tried to cover up the shameful case, but to no avail. Iran announced to the whole world that the American military has once again shown its bestial grin. Official Washington was silent, but in the end it brazenly stated that the crew of flight No. 655 (Tehran-Dubai) behaved defiantly, ignored requests, and therefore the shooting of the airbus was a measure forced in combat conditions. They lied about the A300B evading the established peaceful air corridor of 20 kilometers, about exceeding the permissible speed of 500 miles per hour and an altitude of 4 thousand meters. But the Iranian side immediately provided the press with irrefutable evidence that the American "hard" data is a phony. The liner did not leave the intended corridor, the speed at the time of death was 260 miles per hour and flew at an altitude of 3 thousand meters. The US government didn’t turn up. Little of,none of the guilty were punished.
Sergey GOLUBEV