I was talking to someone young about the 1980s incident where the Soviets shot down a Korean airliner, flight KAL 007, and realized a lot of questions are still unclear to this day…Internet research on this subject yields a lot of conflicting info…If anyone knows anything about this, could you answer the following:
1-Did the Soviets shoot down the plane accidentally or on purpose?
2-Did they know the plane was a civilian airliner or did they think it was an invading military plane or did they think it was something else or did they not know what it was?
3-Was the plane just an innocent civilian airliner or was it also a spy plane testing Soviet air defenses?
4-Why did the Soviets shoot down the plane?
5-A U.S. congressman was on the plane that was shot down, was that just a coincidence or did it have any significance?
Spasiba!!!
As i recall, the plane violated Soviet airspace, did not respond to identification requests (mostly because they did not know they were being hailed due to frequency mismatches between equipment), and was then shot down.
The Soviets were tracking a U.S. spy plane, basically one of those big AWACs jets. On RADAR, a big AWACS jet and a passenger jet look about the same. The U.S. spy plane and KAL 007 were following close to the same path. The U.S. plane then turned and stayed out of Soviet air space.
In the meantime, KAL 007 accidentally flew into Soviet airspace due to its autopilot basically being programmed wrong.
The Soviets, in a case of mistaken identity, thought that the American plane was boldly challenging their air space. They tracked it for a while as it strayed in and out of Soviet airspace and firmly believed it to be a hostile U.S. plane that was intentionally provoking them. Worse, KAL 007 changed altitude during the flight, which was something that long route passenger planes often do, climbing to a higher altitude for better efficiency, but this was interpreted by the Soviets as an intentional evasive maneuver.
As the “American” plane continued to provoke the Soviets by “intentionally” flying into their airspace, the Soviets eventually decided to shoot it down. It took them a while to come to this decision because shooting down a U.S. plane was a big deal. They warned the plane over the radio, but the KAL pilots were certain that the Soviets weren’t talking to them, because after all, they weren’t an American spy plane. When the “American” plane refused to heed their warnings, they shot it down.
President Ronald Reagan was quick to publicly bash the Soviets for cruelly shooting down an innocent Korean plane. He made no mention of the U.S. plane that had been flying in the area and the possibility of mistaken identity. The Soviets initially denied that it was a Korean plane, because they were certain it had been an American plane.
So, to specifically answer your questions:
They purposefully shot down the plane in a case of mistaken identity, which probably qualifies as “accidentally”.
They thought it was a military plane. The Soviet pilot who shot it down could see that it was a commercial jet, but he thought that it was just a commercial jet that had been converted to a spy plane. At no time did he think he was shooting down a civilian plane.
KAL 007 was just a commercial plane. It was not a spy plane. The Soviets thought that it was the same spy plane that they had positively identified earlier, though, and thought that it was intentionally challenging their airspace.
Mistaken identity, combined with KAL 007 going where it shouldn’t have gone.
Congressman Larry McDonald had gone to Korea to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the United States–South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty. The Soviets were not aware that he was on the flight (or that any passengers were on the flight - they still thought it was a spy plane even after they shot it down). So, his presence on the plane was just a coincidence.
The first book about the incident, Shootdown!, was an ill-researched book by a credulous author who knew little about commercial air flight. He built a wild case of spurious fuel documents, secret radio transmissions and the like that pointed to a CIA/KCIA conspiracy, supposedly to force them to light up the Krasnoyarsk air defense radar so the west could snoop its potential. (The immense “wall radar” still stands near Chernobyl, abandoned.)
The second book, The Target Is Destroyed, was a careful investigation by an author who actually spoke with high-ranking Russian air force commanders in charge of the area at the time and others deeply in the know, and concluded it was a multi-person SNAFU with horrifying consequences. But that’s Seymour Hersh for ya.
The real cause of the incident was likely “Asian aircrew syndrome,” where junior flight crew don’t dare contradict senior crew or the captain. A plausible case has been made that the captain mis-set the waypoint tracking, causing a slow drift westward that took the flight into Russian territory instead of down the Pacific flight corridor.
Did the Soviets pay reparations to the KAL 007 victims’ families? That would go a long way toward explaining if they did it on purpose or accidentally
History Channel did a show about KAL 007 and it contained conflicting info to what’s reported on Wikipedia and elsewhere…On that show, they interviewed the actual guy who made the decision to shoot down the plane…not the guy who actually pushed the button to release the missiles that shot down the plane, but the higher up who instructed him to push the button…this higher up is a national hero to this day in Russia and wrote a best selling book there about the shootdown…in the History Channel interview he said that he didn’t know if it was a civilian plane or a hostile military plane, he didn’t know what it was, all he knew was that if it was an innocent civilian plane and he ordered it shot down he would be in trouble but if it was a hostile invading plane and he didn’t order it shot down he would REALLY be in trouble, so he took the first option…he made it seem as is the first penalty would have been a reprimand or maybe a demotion or even getting kicked out of the military, but the second penalty would have been siberia or even death so he wasn’t taking any chances…this actually sounds very soviet like in its thinking, no???
I was taught that we won the war, too. Then I went to Canada to visit my cousins and learned that they had a completely opposite point of view.
Both sides fought for a while, both achieved something that they could claim was a victory, and both sides decided it was best to end the war. So both sides won (or at least claimed to). A tie is probably the best way to really describe what happened.
So in this case, the History Channel probably has it right. That’s a rarity for them these days. Usually you’re more likely to find them showing conclusive proof that Aliens from outer space actually won the war of 1812 but this fact was covered up by the Masons and the secret U.S. branch of the Knights Templar.
Both sides had mixed motives. SOME of the Southern war hawks definitely had ambitions to grab Canadian territory, but there were several instances where U.S. troops refused to cross the Canadian border, because that wasn’t what they’d signed on for.
The War of 1812 was a dumb, unnecessary war, though it may have been inevitable. When you have a genuine superpower (England) behaving like a superpower (i.e. like a bully) and a young, upstart power (us) spoiling for a fight, something like the war of 1812 was bound to happen eventually.
But England wasn’t risking disaster- the United States WAS. Tjhe end result was, I suppose, a tie. Neither England nor the USA lost anything of value. In the end, England pretty much had to accept that the United States was going to expand all the way to the Pacific, which was a “win” for us. The only undisputed losers were the Indians.
But the United States COULD have ended up beaten, bankrupt and fragmented. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Just to make sure we keep things on track here, let’s keep in mind that this thread is about KAL 007. There’s no problem making remarks about the accuracy of the History Channel since that is where the OP is getting info from, but any real discussion about the War of 1812 or other topics should be done in another thread.
The Soviet pilot (or maybe even more than one) did a visual confirmation before missile launch. He saw that it was a Boeing passenger plane. He still shot it down.