Korean Air Lines Flight 007

Korean Air Lines Flight 007

A computer rendering of HL7442, the KAL 747 lost during Flight 007
Occurrence
Date	September 1, 1983
Summary	Airliner shoot down
Site	46°34′N 141°17′E West of Sakhalin island
Aircraft type	Boeing 747-230B
Operator	Korean Air Lines
Registration	HL7442
Flight origin	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, New York United States
Last stopover	Anchorage International Airport, Anchorage, Alaska United States
Destination	Gimpo International Airport, Seoul South Korea
Passengers	240
Crew	29
Fatalities	269
Survivors	0

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

The Soviet Union stated that the aircraft had entered Soviet airspace as a deliberate provocation by the United States, the purpose being to test its military response capabilities, repeating the provocation of Korean Air Flight 902, also shot down by Soviet aircraft over the Kola Peninsula in 1978.

The incident attracted a storm of protest from across the world, particularly from the United States.

Flight & Passenger Information

Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was a commercial Boeing 747-230B (registration: HL7442, formerly D-ABYH, was previously operated by Condor Airlines) flying from New York City, United States to Seoul, South Korea. The aircraft—piloted by Chun Byung-in—departed Gate 15, 35 minutes behind its scheduled departure time of 11:50 P.M. local time, and took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on August 31. After refueling at Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, the aircraft departed for Seoul while carrying 240 passengers and 29 crew at 13:00 GMT (3:00 AM local time) on September 1. KAL 007 flew westward and then turned south on a course for Seoul-Kimpo International Airport that took it much farther west than planned, cutting across the Soviet Kamchatka Peninsula and then over the Sea of Okhotsk towards Sakhalin, violating Soviet airspace more than once.

Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Senator Steven Symms of Idaho and Representative Carroll J. Hubbard Jr. of Kentucky were to have joined Larry McDonald onboard KAL 007 but they accepted a later flight on KAL 015 in order to meet other commitments . Four of the people who boarded in New York, Robert Sears, his wife, and two children, left the aircraft in Anchorage; Sears had vacationed in New York with his family.

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

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

Interception

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

The following reconstruction of events is largely based on information provided by the US State Department and the ICAO.

Soviet air defense units had been tracking the aircraft for more than an hour while it entered and left Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula. Two Su-15 Flagon interceptors, scrambled from Dolinsk-Sokol airbase.

Timeline of attack:

• 18:15 GMT - "KE007 requested FL [flight level] 350 [35,000 feet]".
• 18:20 GMT - "Tokyo Radio transmitted the clearance for the aircraft to climb to this level.
• 18:23 GMT - "KE007 reported reaching FL 350" .
• 18:26 GMT - Major Gennadie Osipovich, pilot of the lead aircraft, fired 120 rounds of ammunition in four 30-round bursts from his cannon. The lack of tracers made them invisible to the 747, which continued on its course. Approximately 12 miles from the shore of Sakhalin Island the lead Soviet aircraft, piloted by Gennady Osipovich, fires an air to air missile. When the missile exploded 50 meters behind KAL 007, the elevator cross over cable was either severed or unraveled causing an arc upward of one minute and 13 seconds - from 35,000 ft. to 38,250 ft. and down again to below 35,000. Captain Chun then brought KAL 007, pulling up for 10 seconds, out of a sharp descent back to 35,000 ft.
• 18:26 GMT - Major Gennadie Osipovich, lead Soviet pilot, mistakenly (as subsequent Russian real-time military telecommunications show) reports: "The target is destroyed." .
• 18:26:08 GMT - Captain Chun yells, "Retard throttles." First Officer Son responds, "Engines normal, sir." Indicating that Maj. Osipovich's heat seeking missile did not destroy 1 of the 4 engines. Son will again report engines normal at 18:26:45
• 18:26:46 GMT - Captain Chun of KAL 007 was able to turn off the autopilot. "Emergency procedures call for saying 'Mayday' three times, followed by other information about the nature of the emergency ... The cockpit crew should have continued broadcasting until the last possible moment to help lead rescuers to the plane's location" .
• 18:27:10 - 18:27:25 GMT - "Tokyo Radio received a partly intelligible transmission from KE007. After extensive analysis and filtering of noise, the following words were discernible: Korean Air zero zero seven ... (unintelligible) ... rapid compressions ... (unintelligible) ... descending to one zero thousand [10,000 feet].".
• 18:29:13 GMT - The Soviet pilots unsuccessfully try to locate the wreckage of KAL 007 stating: "I don't see it."
• 18:29:54 GMT - Another Soviet pilot says of their target: "No I don't see it.".
• 18:30 GMT - KAL 007 was reported by radar at 5,000 meters (16,424 feet).
• 18:35 GMT - KAL 007 begins spiral descent over Moneron Island after having attained level flight for almost 5 minutes "The last plotted radar position of the target was 18:35 hours at 5,000 meters."
• 18:38 GMT - KAL 007 disappeared from the radar screen (approximately 12 minutes after the initial attack. Soviet radar personnel stationed at Komsomolsk-na-Amura on the Siberian maritime reported KAL 007 disappearing from radar screen at 18:38 at 1,000 ft. altitude due to radar inablility to track below that altitude. A free fall from 35,000 feet would take a similar aircraft approximately 2 minutes.
• 18:38:37 GMT - The first Soviet Pilot reiterates: "I don't see anything in this area. I just looked." With fuel running low the Soviet jets return to their base without sighting the remains of their target.

Crash Scene

According to the ICAO: "The location of the main wreckage was not determined ... The approximate position was 46°34′N 141°17'E, which was in international waters." This point is about 41 miles from Moneron Island and about 45 miles from the shore of Sakhalin 33 miles from the point of attack

It was reported at the time that "Russian naval and air search units ... have barred the U.S. and Japanese search forces from the exact area where the 747 is believed to have crashed, even though that spot is beyond the 12-mi. territorial limit from Sakhalin Island."

The following had been recovered by September 20, 1983 (nearly three weeks after the incident):

• Aircraft Debris: 503 (449 by Japan and 54 by the Soviet Union);
• Victim Belongings: 345 (323 by Japan and 22 by the Soviet Union);
• Suitcases: 0
• Human Remains: 13 body parts and tissues (13 by Japan and 0 the Soviet Union) including 2 torsos;

Six days later, the Soviets turned over another non-human 76 items. On December 19, 1983, the Soviets surrendered yet another 83 small items, bringing the total of all items recovered to 1,020 Life magazine reported: "The Russians picked up 18 articles of clothing and sent them to Japan -- but only after having them drycleaned."

The 1991 Izvestia series of interviews with the civilian divers who had visited KAL 007 at the bottom starting 7 days from the shootdown reported in amazement that out of the 269 passengers and crew, they found no more than 10 small body parts and one partial torso.

A comparable 747 crash on June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 with 329 passengers onboard, yielded: 131 bodies in 2 days and many huge pieces of the airliner (about four tons in all). Nearly three weeks after that incident, the in-flight voice recorder and in-flight data recorder were retrieved

Early Reports

On September 1, 1983, the New York Times noted: "Early reports said the plane ... had been forced down by Soviet Air Force planes and that all 240 passengers and 29 crew members were believed to be safe." "Korean Foreign Ministry officials cited the United States Central Intelligence Agency as the source for the report that the plane had been forced down on Sakhalin, but American officials in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington said they could not confirm or deny that report." The informant reported that "the plane had landed at Sakhalin. The crew and passengers are safe." .

Aviation Week & Space Technology for September 5, 1983, reported that Korean Air Lines had sent another aircraft "to pick up the passengers and bring them to South Korea."

C. K. Suh, Manager of the American Regional Office of Korean Air Lines in Los Angeles, phoned Congressman Larry McDonald's press aide, Tommy Toles, that he had "just called Korean Air Lines in Seoul" and that "the information I got from them is that [the] U.S. Embassy in Korea informed the Korean Government, Minister of Foreign Affairs ... that the plane has landed in Sakhalin."

An additional phone call received by Tommy Toles at the McDonald office: "This is Duty Officer Orville Brockman at FAA headquarters in Washington, DC. We have just received information from our FAA representative, Mr. Dennis Wilhelm in Tokyo, as follows: He has been advised by the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau headquarters, Air Traffic Division, Mr. Takano -- T-a-k-a-n-o -- who is his counterpart in Japanese aviation, as follows: Japanese self-defense force confirms that the Hokkaido radar followed Air Korea to a landing in Soviet territory on the island of Sakhalinska -- S-a-k-h-a-l-i-n-s-k-a -- and it is confirmed by the manifest that Congressman McDonald is on board."

Investigations

Initial ICAO report

Map showing the divergence of planned and actual flightpaths

The initial International Civil Aviation Organization investigation into KAL 007 was not given access to the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) or the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CFR) but rather transcripts of the CFR. The ICAO released their initial report August 31, 1983, which concluded that the violation of Soviet airspace was accidental: The autopilot had been set to heading hold after departing Anchorage. It was determined that the crew did not notice this error or subsequently perform navigational checks that would have revealed that the aircraft was diverging further and further from its assigned route. This was later deemed to be caused by a "lack of situational awareness and flight deck coordination".

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

Revised ICAO report

On November 18, 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin released both the FDR and CVR of KAL 007 to South Korean President Roh Tae-woo in part due to the efforts of Senator Jesse Helms. Initial South Korean research showed the FDR to be empty and the CVR to have an unintelligible copy. The Russians then released the "original recordings" to the ICAO. The ICAO Report continued to support the initial assertion that KAL 007 accidentally flew in Soviet airspace, citing after listening to the flight crew's conversations recorded on the CVR.

American reaction

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

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

On September 15, President Reagan ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to revoke the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to operate flights into and out of the United States. As a result, Aeroflot flights to North America were only available through cities in Canada or Mexico. Aeroflot service to the United States was not restored until April 29, 1986.

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

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

Soviet version

The Soviet Government expressed its "regret over the death of innocent victims", but laid the blame for this "criminal, provocative act" on the CIA.

Soviet authorities argued that:

Today, when all versions have been viewed from all possible angles, when leading specialists, including pilots who have flown Boeings for thousands of hours, have declared that three computers could not break down all at once and neither could five radio transmitters, there can be no doubt as to the intentions of the intruder plane.

The Soviet pilots who intercepted the aircraft could not have known that it was a civilian plane. It was flying without the navigation lights, in conditions of poor visibility and did not respond to radio signals.

According to the Soviet line, the airliner was clearly on a spy mission as it "flew deep into Soviet territory for several hundred kilometres, without responding to signals and disobeying the orders of interceptor fighter planes."

The purpose of this alleged mission was to probe Soviet air defenses over the highly sensitive military sites on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island.

Russia has since apologized for the aforementioned claims regarding warnings and navigation lights.

Controversy

Flight 007 has been the subject of ongoing controversy in America and has spawned a number of conspiracy theories, including allegations that the flight was a spy mission. One of these theories was that Space Shuttle Challenger and a satellite were monitoring the airliners progress over Soviet territory. Time magazine, which printed this claim, was sued by Korean Air Lines and forced to pay damages as well as print an apology.

The controversy has continued. In 1994, Robert W Allardyce and James Gollin wrote Desired Track: The Tragic Flight of KAL Flight 007, supporting the spy mission theory. In 2007, they reiterated their position in a series of articles in Airways magazine, arguing that the investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization was a cover-up.

In January 1996, Hans Ephraimson, Chairman of the American Association for Families of KAL 007 Victims, claimed that South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan accepted $4 million from Korean Air in order to gain "government protection" during the investigation of the shootdown.

Cold War context

The Flight 007 shootdown occurred in the context of heightened Cold War tensions related to the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the confrontational strategy of the newly elected Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

1983 saw at least two incidents in which Soviet forces apparently believed nuclear attack was imminent: the false alarm on September 24 allegedly quashed by Stanislav Petrov and the Able Archer NATO exercise in November.

Popular culture

• 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), starring Angela Lansbury, John Cullum, and Kyle Secor, was based on the book of the same title by R.W. Johnson, about the efforts of Nan Moore (Lansbury), the mother of a passenger, to get answers from the US and Russian governments.
  • The British Granada Television documentary drama Coded Hostile, screened on 7 September 1989, detailed the US military and governmental investigation, highlighting the likely confusion of Flight 007 with the USAF RC-135 in the context of routine US SIGINT/COMINT missions in the area. Written by Brian Phelan and directed by David Darlow, it starred Michael Murphy, Michael Moriarty, and Chris Sarandon. It was screened by HBO in the United States under the title Tailspin - Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy on 20 August 1989. An updated version of Coded Hostile was screened in the UK on 31 August 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation.
• A documentary from Unsolved History, a program of Discovery Channel, featured this incident.
• The song "Murder in the Skies" by Gary Moore on his album Victims of the Future (1983) retells the incident.
• The song "The Ballad of Flight 007" by Gerald R. Griffin (1983) recounts the story from both a personal and political perspective.
• The drama "Light of Million Hopes" (In Chinese 萬家燈火), produced by Asia Television Limited (ATV) Hong Kong, a role named "Go Lai" (starred by Joey Meng 萬綺雯) was killed in during a "1983 Korean flight shot downed by Soviet". However in the drama the flight was flying from Japan to Korea, while KAL 007 was a US to Korea flight.

See also

• List of airliner shootdown incidents
• List of Korea-related topics
• Larry McDonald (U.S. congressman, passenger on Flight 007)
• The Yeltsin/Senator Helms Interchange

Further reading

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

External links

• Shootdown at IMDb
• Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy at IMDb
• KAL 007 Mystery
• Interview with Soviet pilot who shot down plane
• Pre-shootdown photos of the airplane
• FBI Files for KA007 Mystery: Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts
• Another Location of the FOIA Document of the KAL Flight 007
• KHABAROVSK JOURNAL; Keeping the Air Lanes Free: Lessons of a Horror
• NASA report on autopilot error
• Committee for the Rescue of KAL 007 Survivors