During the Cold War, the battle between the two major military groups of Warsaw Pact and NATO, especially between the United States and the Soviet Union, has never stopped. Rebellion, assassination, reconnaissance and anti-reconnaissance are commonplace, and infiltration of the other side's military strategic areas was even more useless measures.
The United States and the Soviet Union also often experienced incidents of aircraft entering the other side's military investigation. For example, on April 8, 1950, the Soviet Union shot down a spy plane modified by the US B-29 bomber for the first time. In November 1973, the Soviet Union also collided with the US fighter and the US reconnaissance aircraft that penetrated Soviet airspace and died together. In order to confuse the other party, the United States often converts passenger planes into reconnaissance aircraft for reconnaissance.
Korean Airlines 007 passenger plane
In order to avoid the United States using this as an excuse to cross the border to investigate, the Soviet army stipulated: No matter who it is, as long as it invades, it will be defeated first. In this way, tragedies will inevitably occur, and a passenger plane of Korean Air unfortunately acted as the protagonist of this tragedy.
In the early morning of September 1, 1983, a Korean Air Boeing-747 passenger plane from Alaska, Alaska, USA, to Seoul , was shot down by the Soviet Su-15 fighter jet when it accidentally entered the Soviet Far East. All 269 people on board were killed.
It is reported that former US President Nixon originally planned to take this flight, but later changed his mind and escaped. After the
incident, the United States set off a wave of condemning the Soviet Union around the world. On September 1, 1983, under the instruction of the US government, major mainstream media in the United States began to launch public opinion attacks on the Soviet Union, criticizing the Soviet government for massacring unarmed innocent "civilians", killing nearly 269 passengers on Korean Air passenger planes.
In addition to the American news media, heavyweights from the United States also appeared in the media one by one. At that time, US President Reagan, his Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State, publicly condemned the Soviet authorities for brutal massacre of civilians.
U.S. President Reagan delivered a speech to the people of the whole country on this matter on September 5. His first sentence was: "I came for the tragedy of Korean Airlines. The Soviet Union attacked 269 innocent men, women and children without armed forces. Such atrocities against humanity can never be forgotten, both in the United States and the world."
A few weeks later, the United States announced the launch of the famous "Star Wars Project."
And the Soviet Union is not showing any weakness, claiming that shooting down foreign aircraft that invaded its airspace is in accordance with international law, and the Soviet Union has no responsibility!
So, is this Boeing 747 really a civil aviation? If so, why did it accidentally enter over the sensitive military areas of the Soviet Union? If not, what kind of ulterior motives are hidden?
How many years have passed? People have always had different opinions on the reason, and there is no consensus. Just like MH370, it is full of mystery of conspiracy theories.
People have given many versions of the cause of this incident, and the more representative ones are as follows:
1. The Soviet Union confused the passenger plane with the US spy plane that was performing reconnaissance mission nearby, resulting in the shooting down.
In the early morning of September 1, the Soviet Union's air defense radar confirmed unidentified aircraft (i.e., Flight KAL007 deviating from the route) flew northeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It was determined that the US RC-135 electronic reconnaissance aircraft was just on the local espionage mission that night.
At 1:30 in the morning, the passenger plane entered Soviet airspace and flew into the air defense identification zone of the Soviet Far East Intercontinental Missile Launch Base. Then the Soviet army sent two Su-15s to be launched to intercept. At 3:8 a.m., the Su-15 fighter of the 40th Fighter of the 11th Air Defense Army of the Soviet National Air Defense Force (the agency stationed in Khabarovsk City) captured the No. 007 passenger plane, but because the sky was dim in the early morning, it was impossible to confirm its model, but there was no problem invading Soviet airspace.
12 minutes later, Flight 007 began to raise the flight altitude, and the Soviet fighter immediately implemented warning shooting. Because it was not equipped with tracer bombs, it only fired armor-piercing bombs . The armor-piercing bomb whizzed past the front of the passenger plane with a flame, but turned a blind eye to the passenger plane and did not react to it. It continued to raise the flight altitude to 35,000 feet.After
was pulled up, the speed of the 007 passenger plane slowed down, and the Soviet fighter plane was forced to change its altitude to prevent the two planes from colliding. At the same time, Soviet pilots defined the behavior of passenger planes as acts of war, believing that enemy planes intend to escape. Flight 007 was about to fly out of Soviet airspace at 3:23 a.m., and Soviet pilots asked the base for operation instructions, and the base commander gave the order to "destroy the invading aircraft." Two minutes later, the Su-15 fighter launched one infrared guided and radar guided missiles, . After 30 seconds, the infrared guided missile hit the tail of Flight 007, causing damage to the hydraulic and power systems (according to the ICAO investigation report), and the fuselage began to fall after rising. After
was hit, Flight 007 fell rapidly, and one minute later, the record of Flight 007 flight data recorder (black box) ended here. More than 10 minutes later, Flight 007 disappeared from the radar of the Soviet Union and Hokkaido Kōnai. The Japanese fishing boat "58th Thousand Dorimaru" heard the sound of the plane and witnessed the explosion at sea at 18.5 am North of Haima Island.
2 and 007 flight navigation positioning errors were entered in advance, but this possibility is also questionable.
At the end of 1983, an independent UN investigation team conducted an investigation based on existing evidence and suggested that the reason why the aircraft deviates from its course may be that the deputy captain mis-entered coordinates during takeoff in Anchorage, Alaska caused the aircraft to dynamism; another possible reason is that the captain forgot to change the HDG (magnetic heading) mode to INS mode (inertial navigation system) after the aircraft takes off, but this is a standard flight procedure. The experienced captain should not make such low-level mistakes, so the investigators believe that the possibility of incorrectly entering coordinates is relatively high.
Boeing 747 can enter the flight parameters of the setting navigation device in advance to allow the computer to drive automatically, unless it encounters bad weather and take-off and landing stages. It is speculated that the pilot of the chief and deputy pilots made the aircraft deviate from the predetermined channel due to the operation error. There are several possible reasons: mechanical failure of the navigation device, INS (instrument navigation system) input error, inertial navigation device starting error, and erroneous navigation device switching error. However, if there are three people driving, co-pilot, and flight engineer who operates the aircraft, if there are errors in settings or inputs, you should be able to detect them immediately. Moreover, the navigation lights of civil aviation aircraft are easy to identify, but the Soviet Air Force did not recognize them and shot them down directly, which means that there are still answers to the questions here.
3. The US military instructed that
The US military used its alliance with South Korea to understand the Soviet military deployment status in the Far East, so it instructed South Korea's civil aviation aircraft to deliberately fly into Soviet airspace to spy on its own, but this statement was regarded as a conspiracy theory. But we have said earlier that the 007 passenger plane turned a deaf ear to the warnings of Soviet fighters. As for why the pilots of the passenger plane did not respond to the warnings, there is no clear statement yet. This is also one of the reasons why people believe that the passenger plane is suspected of spying. As the saying goes, being a thief is guilty.
4. Fuel saving theory, but it deviates from the channel by 500 kilometers. This statement is obviously not convincing. The captain wants to save fuel, so he flies northward to shorten the range, helping the company reduce costs has become the captain's mission. However, is it necessary to risk flying into Soviet airspace in order to save fuel? Moreover, Soviet Air Force pilots should see the KAL007's civil aviation aircraft navigation lights, and even if they cannot see the fuselage, they should not easily shoot down by international criticism. However, according to an interview with the Soviet pilot who shot down the passenger plane 13 years later, the Soviet pilot knew from the characteristics of the two rows of windows on the side of the plane that it was an Boeing passenger plane, but he believed that this did not mean anything, because a civil aviation aircraft could engage in military missions as long as it was modified.
5. Flight detention said: The monograph on the research of this air crash, "Search and Rescue 007: Korean Air Flight 007 and its Survivors, was published in 2000. In the book, the author pointed out that the flight KAL007 did not explode immediately after being attacked by the air-to-air missile , but continued to fly for about 12 minutes, and finally successfully landed in Sakhalin Island or adjacent waters.
Based on the analysis of black box data of aircraft handed over by the Russian government in 1993, it is believed that one of the two air-to-air missiles launched by the Su-15 fighter, that is, the one that uses thermal guidance, did not hit the target. Because the black box records a conversation between the captain and the mechanic after the missile hits. During the conversation, the captain asked about the situation and the mechanic replied that the engine was operating normally, so he judged that the thermal guided missile did not hit the aircraft engine. This gives the plane a chance to land in a crash. At the same time, according to the top secret information about the incident decrypted by the Russian government in 1992, the author noticed that the commander asked why the plane was still flying after the missile hit.
According to information from an organization called "Soviet Prisons, Mental Prisons and Forced Labor Reform Concentration Camp Research Center", the author pointed out that the Soviet government seized all passengers and crew and refused to admit the matter to the outside world. The authorities have seized passengers and crew so far, but this possibility is very small and a bit fantasy, just like the MH370 that is still missing. Isn’t it said that all the passengers on the plane were detained by the US military at the US military base on Digo Garcia Island ?
What is the fact that Korean Air 007 passenger plane was shot down? The confusing reasons make people full of imagination.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Yeltsin later visited Seoul, officially apologized to South Korea and grandly handed over the two black boxes of the Boeing passenger plane to the South Korean side.
According to the records of the black box, the ICAO submitted its final report in 1993 after a new round of independent investigations. The investigation team found that Flight KAL007 used HDG (magnetic heading) mode as the navigation of autonomous driving after taking off in Anchorage until it was shot down. That is to say, the captain of the passenger plane did not perform standard flight mode after takeoff and changed the HDG (magnetic heading) mode to INS mode (inertial navigation system), which was the reason why Flight KAL007 was staggered into Soviet airspace. The carelessness of the captain of flight
KAL007, coupled with the wrong judgment of the situation by the Soviet fighter pilot, directly led to the occurrence of the air crash.
But why the captain was so careless that he had no response to the shooting warnings of Soviet fighter jets, it is still confusing.
So, despite the black box record, the world's research on the Soviet Union's shooting down of the "South Korean Aircraft" incident in 1983 has not stopped. In addition to scholars, there are also some social activists, wealthy people and former US government officials. Former US State Department official John Gaiber (Gaiber has been working in the US State Department for a long time and has participated in planning state lies many times, including covering up the truth about the U2 plane being shot down in the former Soviet Union in 1960 during Eisenhower's administration, etc.) also put forward "stunning" evidence based on a large amount of information, believing that the incident of the No. 55719 passenger plane was by no means an accident, but an international conspiracy deliberately created by the Reagan administration.
So, the world is ups and downs, and many things that happen are not as simple as it seems. It will take many years before we will know the truth, and there will never be any truth.
For example, if the MH370 passenger plane disappears, will we have the truth?
