“And now, in the wake of the barbaric act committed yesterday by the Soviet regime against a commercial jetliner [Korean Air Lines flight 007]”

Ronald Regan.

 

Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007)was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the South Korean airliner servicing the flight was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 interceptor. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but due to a navigational mistake made by the KAL crew the airliner deviated from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace around the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots which were likely not seen by the KAL pilots. The Korean airliner eventually crashed in the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States Representative from Georgia. The Soviets found the wreckage under the sea on September 15, and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret until 1992.

 

Little known at the time was the United States role in the shoot down of KAL007.  The United States was in fact in the area of where KAL007 was shot down earlier that evening, when a A cobra ball mission KC 135 was planning to monitor a Soviet missile test from the Kamchatka peninsula.  The test did not go off and unfortunately the KC 135 flew very close to the path of KAL007.  This created the confusion necessary for Soviet radar controllers to believe that KLA007 was in fact a KC 135 on the cobra ball mission.  Earlier in the Pacific US naval forces had been conducting Feetex 83.  The purpose of this exercise was to probe Soviet defenses in the area of the Kamchatka peninsula as well as Petropavlovsk submarine base.  The activities of the psychological operations had Soviet defenses on high alert and demonstrated the inadequacies of their system.  All of this led to the overreaction of Soviet Defense forces on the night of September 1, 1983.

 

KAL007 is a tragic story that exemplifies all that occurred during 1983 the worlds most dangerous year.