Soviet Fighter - Shot Down Commerical Airline - Discovery Channel

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three a 747 flew high above the Pacific with almost 300 people on board Korean Air Lines flight double-oh-seven was nearing the end of its journey in new york to seoul but it had wandered off course hundreds of kilometers to the west into Soviet airspace the flight crew were oblivious that Soviet Defense Command was on high alert sensitive military bases lay below fighters were ordered into the air to observe then to fire warning shots then to destroy the unresponsive intruder the world was stunned by the tragic loss of life what had gone wrong who was a fault we'll use 21st century forensic technology to reinvestigate this controversial event and hear from the Soviet fighter pilot who shot the Korean airliner out of the sky mr. Cugat oh yeah it's Cazale prodigy on unsolved history first of September 1983 Korean Airlines flight double-oh-seven with 269 people aboard was shot down by a Soviet fighter plane no one on board survived 23 of the dead were children under the age of 12 the incident sparked outrage around the world the United States charged the Soviets had fired upon a defenseless civilian aeroplane without provocation there was absolutely no justification either legal or moral for what the Soviets did the Soviet Union countered the 747 was actually a spy plane and that their actions were justified the Soviet regime to the end of its days insisted the mission had been a spy flight they hid away the data the recorders that they discovered and their own internal reports on the behavior of their air defense forces many mysteries about this disaster remain to this day no one knows why the Korean jumbo jet was so far off course it had straight over Soviet territory but was it in Soviet airspace when it was shot down how could a Soviet fighter pilot have mistaken a commercial 747 for a spy plane and why was so little wreckage found to help answer these questions unsolved history has assembled a team of investigators and experts historian Daniel Martinez retired aviation investigator ron schleede author and former NASA engineer Jim Oberg retired 747 pilot how Ewing Russian aviation investigator vladimir kaufman former soviet air force general anatoly kornukov and Russian journalist Andre Ilyas also we'll hear a moment-by-moment account of the tragedy by the man who actually shot down que al double-oh-seven fighter pilot lieutenant colonel gennady Osipovich in 1983 tensions between the United States and the USSR were high American President Ronald Reagan had called the Soviet Union the evil empire five months earlier and the superpowers were engaged in a dangerous game of brinksmanship on September the 1st the game turned deadly after stopping to refuel Korean Airlines flight double-oh-seven departed Anchorage Alaska at 4:00 a.m. it was the second leg of its flight from New York to Seoul the shortest troop would have taken the jet over Soviet territory the Cold War tensions were high so commercial airliners routinely stayed outside the borders of the USSR ten minutes after leaving Anchorage kaal double-oh-seven started drifting off course one hour and 20 minutes later the plane was no longer in contact with Alaska's air traffic control and even further off its flight path it was heading straight for the Kamchatka Peninsula and out of range of any of the North Pacific radio beacons kaal double-oh-seven I'd missed its last American checkpoint at Bethel Alaska after it passed Bethel which it missed by only 12 miles not really enough to give the radar controllers even had they been watching much of a heads-up there are no more beacons on the entire North Pacific route until you get to Japan the Kamchatka Peninsula was home to several key Soviet military installations as the Korean airliner approached Kamchatka Soviet air defense ordered fighter jets to approach and observe it 32 minutes later flight double-oh-seven had crossed the peninsula and re-entered international airspace Soviet air defense tracked the plane as it continued on a Southwest heading apparently unaware that they were off-course kaal double-oh-seven s cockpit crew continue to make weather and progress reports two air traffic controllers in both Anchorage and Tokyo the passengers on that airplane even the crew and all probability weren't even aware that they had ever violated Soviet airspace soon double-oh-seven approached Sakhalin Island where once again it would enter Soviet airspace Soviet Defense Command ordered mig-23 and su-15 interceptors into the air for 20 minutes the fighters shadowed the Korean 747 the Soviets had large aircraft out to meet the intruder came around behind it and followed it across the island at 6:15 p.m. local time the 747 pilot requested permission to climb to ten thousand seven hundred meters three minutes after that su-15 pilot lieutenant colonel gennady Osipovich received orders to destroy the aircraft Osipovich fired his two missiles each bearing 32 kilos of high explosives and reported to ground control that the target was destroyed it took 12 minutes for the crippled aeroplane to spiral ten thousand seven hundred meters to earth kaal double-oh-seven crashed into the Sea of Okhotsk just north of mana an island 350 nautical miles off course why had the plane strayed so far off its flight path the Korean pilot and crew were very experienced and they'd flown the Anchorage to Seoul route many times before Clark Moore's noble attack how could they fly like this how could an experienced pilot really ignore his navigation what haste remains a mystery vodka lawyer Juanita medulla represented the families of the victims of kaal double-oh-seven the claim was on negligence on the part of the cockpit crew that they had devices in the cockpit that would have let them know that they were off course in terms of coordinates and also that they were overland when they should have been up water so our argument was that they were totally oblivious to where they were didn't care or they knew that they were off course but we're trying to fumble their way across the Pacific anyway to try and get some insight into the matter retired 747 pilot Hal Ewing and historian Daniel Martinez have come to the flight training academy in Miami Florida Ewing has been studying the crash of KL double-oh-seven for over 20 years using combined data from the black boxes and a 1993 report by the International Civil Aviation Organization he will mimic the flight of kaal double-oh-seven in a state-of-the-art flight simulator from the time it took off until it crashed into the sea I'm and make the same terms that they made at the same time that they made the simulator here has been set to the same weight at the same center of gravity the same weather conditions and trim is the same to the maximum of our ability everything is the same as it was that night okay like most commercial airliners at the time the 747 depended upon an inertial navigation system or AI NS this guided the plane using a series of ground-based radio beacons the route the aircraft was supposed to fly was r20 which is an airway and r20 has certain waypoints along the way that are entered in to the inertial navigation system and the inertial navigation system when it's linked to the autopilot will then fly the aircraft to each of these waypoints but this system wasn't automatic the pilot needed to switch the aircraft to the AI NS mode manually when it reached a certain location the autopilot should have been linked to the inertial navigation system which would have taken the aircraft on a route that would have kept it out of Soviet airspace but on the 1st of September 1983 the AI NS was not engaged for some reason the switch was in all probability never moved from heading to I NS to actually engage the inss clearly something distracted them at the crucial moment caused them to simply forget to move the switch from heading to I ns and then they never caught the error for the remaining five hours to play one of the central questions that the general public has had about this incident since it happened is how could someone not have seen what was going on why didn't ground control see that the flight was off course why didn't somebody warn KL 0:07 that it was about to stray into the Soviet Union the answer is right here these are all the sites that existed in 1983 that could have seen Korean air 0:07 on radar as it headed off to the west toward Seoul it began to deviate from its desired track almost immediately after takeoff a direct track from where it was at that moment to Bethel is not depicted on the chart and it's not depicted on the radar scope of the controller so there was really no way for the controller to know whether the flight was proceeding at any given moment direct Bethel or not simply by looking at his radar scope now we have radar said even at that time that could reach out thousands of miles in space and track an object why couldn't that track Kayle the problem is they're usually large very powerful phased array radars and they're designed to look at space they're not designed to look at things close to the surface of the earth so because of their antenna position and because of the fact that the earth is round KL 0:07 was simply underneath their radar horizon almost all the time now as you can see from the chart here when KL 0:07 started getting seriously off course and beginning to penetrate Soviet airspace way over here Jonathan Wright it was miles hundreds thousands of miles out of the range of any western radar Russians had radar and the Russians saw them but they used their radar for an purpose that purpose was defense the Soviets diligently monitored each and every airplane that flew into its restricted airspace Russian journalist Andre Ilyich believes that a manned American radar station had seen kaal double-oh-seven veer off course early on but did not pass the information alone yes picture a video surpassed I am there's a PC array the controller's voice is constantly recorded and one said to the other contact them who knows where the hell they are going the researcher came to the point where they told him this has been raised and that's that and that's all boom because the next morning the President of the United States announces the Soviet Union as an evil empire this was pretty well prepared and in that case nobody would have been erasing anything this is all military deceit so by young anybody in fact the evil empire line had come five months earlier and there is no concrete evidence to indicate that anyone in America knew about the plane having strayed into Soviet territory while US radar did track the aircraft as long as it remained in range that information was recorded but not actively monitored and during that time it did show the gradual deviation north of the intended track however at that time there were no procedures in place for a person to monitor the radar to watch for such a deviation but there's no evidence and never has been to suggest that any civil radar that any air traffic controller would have been looking at on that night have the capability to warn KL 0:07 that it was proceeding of course and it wasn't just a radar problem several other events contributed to the tragedy there were other planes in the immediate area that evening another Korean Airlines flight and 120 kilometers away an American spy plane this plane an RC 135 was monitoring secret Soviet missile tests the rc-135 is a converted Boeing 707 which has a similar shape to a 747 these American spy planes flew in and out of Soviet airspace intercepting communications and collecting data the Soviets knew all about these kinds of missions because they were routine they've been flown many times and Soviet pilots had scrambled to actually chase down and often a wave to some of these aircraft passenger airlines had been warned that intrusion into Soviet territory could result in a possible attack the whole area was militarized so to have an airliner coming across this area even by accident set them up for this disaster and because of the cat-and-mouse game being played between America and the USSR the danger was particularly high it was common practice in those days for the u.s. to use rc-135s to tease the soviets mocking that they were going to penetrate their territory they would fly toward their territory and the Soviets would bring up their radars and send up fighters and then the rc-135s would turn around as kaal double-oh-seven neared Soviet airspace its flight path began to converge with that of the rc-135 the Soviets were watching the aircraft on their radar and different radar controllers in different locations were reporting position points to a central area and someone in that Central Command was plotting these positions on a map someone made an error in reporting these coordinates or reporting the numbers and when they plotted it they showed that the two aircraft had in fact moved into the same area in fact had merged and then separated did the Soviets confuse the two airplanes and target the wrong one could anyone familiar with aviation mistake a Boeing 747 for a 707 their numerous superficial similarities and that they're both large swept-wing for engine blowing jet transports both airplanes were just unpainted natural aluminum on the bottom of the wings and bottom of the fuselage so the coloration would be similar if the Soviet fighter planes approached the suspicious aircraft from behind and below they would have seen an outline similar to a 707 s and the 707 converted into an RC 135 was what they were expecting to find in order to clearly identify the plane the fighter pilot would have had to approach it from the side allowing him to see the distinctive hump of the 747 do we have any indication that the Russian fighter pilot did that in the case with the shoot-down he transmitted back to his controllers several interesting pieces of information but nothing that lets us know for sure that he had identified it as an airliner or a 747 retired Soviet Army general anatoly kornukov was the chief commander of air defense force a Killeen island we discovered an unidentified plane heading toward Sakhalin raiders were activated and interceptor pilots ready in their cockpits soon we could identify the play it was still far away I immediately decided to launch interceptors on duty into the air left handed colonel Gennady Osipovich was one of the fighter pilots sent to intercept the intruder I took off they gave me the course immediately northeast because the plane was coming from the north from Kamchatka at first I didn't expect it to be a military flight but then they told me to activate my weapons and aim them at this target general Kuna cough says every effort was made to identify the aircraft that you use chemical making sure that the flushing of navigation lights were on the pilot said yes the flashing lights are workable a flashing light indicates that the plane is carrying civilian passengers but apparently this did not convince the soviet general but judging by the shadow and configuration he said it looked like an RC 135 I reported that I was ready to fire no they said wait don't shoot don't fire you missiles approach his altitude and forced the plane to land in other words they really didn't want to destroy I approached its altitude about ten thousand two hundred meters with readiness and I started to flash my warning lights this is a well-known international signal you are in violation I did it again but again he didn't answer I reported that he wasn't reacting they told me fire warning shots from your cannons I moved to been closer to it and short first in a direction like this parallel to its flight path I felt about four rounds of warning shots and turned a little and fired another shot and again there was absolutely no reaction and no transmission from it the Soviets had to make a decision the Boeing 747 was nearing Sakhalin Island home to six military airfields and the gateway to the Pacific Ocean for the Soviet fleet the others the plane was already approaching the island West Coast when I reported that the plane is absolutely not reacting and it's flying over our base they gave me the order to destroy the plane the crew of kaal double-oh-seven were oblivious what happened during the last dreadful moments of the flight did the soviets cover up their part in the tragedy did the su-15 fighter pilot warn the korean 747 before firing his missiles and where was the plane when it was hit over Soviet territory or in international waters the fate of Korean Airlines flight double-oh-seven was sealed once it strayed into Soviet airspace but what actually took place in those last few crucial moments as a Soviet fighter closed in on KL gobble oh seven Korean passenger plane made an unexpected move began to climb from 10,000 meters to 10,000 700 meters to the Soviet su-15 pilot the aeroplane appeared to be taking evasive action right at that moment something changed no time for a reason analysis about why that change might have happened it's just noticing that oh no it's not maintaining the stable you see me and he's the bullet Rick the Soviet fighter pilot Gennadi Osipovich got into position and fired his two missiles leo and the left rocket is heat-seeking through infrared and the right rocket is ready guided I didn't see the impact of the heat-seeking one but the radar guided I saw because you shoot it and then you have to aim it by sighting it with beam so it does not go off and self-destruct we get some old video or the video of the Allah's prophet I saw it explode right under the tail near the stabilizer table is that I reported that the target was destroyed and returned to my airbase did both Soviet missiles strike the 747 it's not known right after impact you can see that the nose begins to pitch up airplane starts a climb at the same time the crew is making very large inputs with control wheel to try to oppose this and it's not being very effective well a pitch control all comes from the tail so since there was an excursion in pitch we can be fairly confident that something happened to the tail the cockpit voice recorder chronicled the flight crews reaction voice recorder someone says what's that airplane begins to pitch up we should be losing hydraulics about now the missile or missiles had destroyed the hydraulic controls the planes nervous system we know that the engines were still operating normally from the flight recorder the only change is this point here where the pilot himself reduced power in an effort to control this climb we also have a verbal comment that was recorded by the cockpit voice recorder in which the flight engineer or the second officer advised the captain after the missile strike that all four engines were normal looking back here we can imagine what they couldn't see or didn't never knew the tail is scrap metal an extra drag on the tail is jerking the tail back pulling those up meantime with all the scrap back there and the damage the hydraulic lines going through the tail are all now bleeding we're about to lose all four of our hydraulic systems all the hydraulic fluid to be lost and if that happens airplanes pretty much uncontrolled a minute later the cockpit recording stops I don't think that the concept of an attack would have ever occurred to him I don't think they lived long enough to really think it through and and even grasp the idea that they might have been hit by a missile but 10 minutes passed before the passenger jet struck the water at over 1,100 km/h all 269 people on board were killed Korean Air Lines flight double-oh-seven was totally destroyed osa povich insists he fired several warning shots at the jetliner but did the fighter pilot know that he was tracking a passenger plane first of all I didn't have time to figure out what kind of plane it was I was the only one in the cockpit and the plane is not a car for one person to navigate to him weapons to absorb everything and at the same time figure out if it is a civilian plane or whether it is waving at me friendly I had only one goal I was basically a me how to say to kill this is what I learned also Povich was following orders as he had been trained to do but whether he followed recognized international procedures is a matter of debate the international accepted procedure is for the fighters to come up alongside make visual contact with the crew to alert them by either flashing their lights or firing cannons the fighters that were sent up to intercept Korean air did not follow the international procedures for interception and identification this is the actual audio recording of the radio conversation between Osipovich and his commanding officer in the minutes leading up to the firing of his missiles I flashed warning lights meaning you're trespassing I shot four rounds more than 250 shells from cannons we have more than 500 I didn't see the shells they could to see the flashes from the barrel they're big at night everyone could see a new chamber reading is pushkin option miss position we used all possible means to let them know they were trespassing she commands from the ground from the air by blinking lights by warning shots from the cannons at the Purdue predict mr deburr is pushing but if so why didn't KL double-oh-seven see the warning shots it's possible that the Korean plane had started its climb to ten thousand seven hundred meters just before Osipovich fired the warning shots could have passed beneath the 747 out of the Korean cruise line of sight and another mystery remains where exactly was the Korean plane when it was attacked the Soviets claimed but the incident occurred in their airspace but some insist KL double-oh-seven had re-entered international airspace this is a detailed map of the search areas where was the plane found right here x marks the spot where the records are located it's interesting to note that if you trace the 12-mile limit around MOA an island and the 12-mile limit off the west coast of Sakhalin it is definitely in international waters the report from the first investigation by the ICAO the International Civil Aviation Organization was released in 1984 it was inconclusive two crucial pieces of evidence were missing the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorders the so-called black boxes the cockpit voice recorder does just what the name implies it records all the sounds and all the voices that occur on the flight deck so that investigators can listen in and to hear what's going on not until 1992 two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union did Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin allow access to KL double-oh-seven s black boxes the flight data recorder was missing for almost 10 years finally turned over to ICAO in 1992 when we were able to see these traces right here and all the rest of the data on the flight data recorder finally for the first time we could have a much better idea of exactly what happened to board Korea in their 0:07 that night to confirm where KL double-oh-seven fell into the sea our experts employed a state-of-the-art search and rescue program called SAR map software designer Owen Hallett and oceanographer Malcolm Spaulding worked backwards calculating where the jumbo jet hit the water from information about the debris both tides and currents caused items in the water to move in predictable ways we have some indication about where the debris was found and roughly the time period that it occurred and so let's say that the debris was being picked up along the shore in the southeast area of Akito Island in Japan and so what we're looking for is actually where that path intersects with the flight path where we see these particles now intersect with the grain line which is K double-oh-seven s flight path we would say that's probably the origin or the location of where the wreck site could be found after tracking the currents back to the crash site Hallet and Spalding confirm their results by following the debris forward again now that we have information about the actual wreck site we've essentially overlaid the where the wreck was found by the green airplane symbol that says wreck found and we've overlaid on that as well the location of where we thought the search area should have been located for the debris field that we saw see that the the location of the wreck is to the south and west slightly of where the missile attack occurred which seems consistent with a flight path and and subsequent airplane motion after the attack occurred the wreckage was found by the divers here which is approximately 38 kilometers or that's about 20 nautical miles from Sakhalin Island then that indicates that the wreckage was located just outside the 12-mile limit of territorial waters of Soviet Union that's right Ronon looks like it was about 14 nautical miles offshore this confirms where the Korean plane hit the water but it doesn't betray where the Soviet fighter attacked its target did the deadly missile strike the jumbo jet over neutral or Soviet territory Russian Aviation investigators vladimir kaufman and yuri chigger of were part of the original International Civil Aviation Organization team in 1983 this misfortune that presented here are the results of the decoding of the black box recording from plane KL 0:07 the decoding was conducted in 1983 partition here because we did not have proper equipment the decoding was done manually based on data from Soviet radar KL double-oh-seven did not plunge straight down after being struck by the missile instead it went into a long wide spiral marathon graphic episode here on this graph we see the planes movements after it was hit Russian what does hadisha spur are here is the downward spiral with loss of altitude and speed with the spiral descent the plane's fuselage skin started disintegrating a squawk of millions of up Shifta so Mariota the Hadassah viraja the debris was dispersed over the 5 to 7 kilometer radius in fact very little debris was ever found the Soviets cited this fact as evidence that KL double-oh-seven was a spy plane to this day general kornél cough is skeptical that the 747 was a civilian aircraft yet I am still convinced there were no passengers on that plane and I have grounds to think so no intact bodies were recovered from the crash site this fuelled counter charges that the Soviets had captured the passengers and were holding them prisoner where were the remains submarine captain McCoy years piloted one of the submersibles involved in the recovery Assam Junior Miss Korea we were actually looking for the Boeing or what was left of it and our main task was to recover the black boxes once the Soviets found the black boxes they wanted to determine if there had been passengers aboard the alleged spy plane only fragments of four human bodies including a child were ever recovered when allegedly of course we found bones and body parts you've seen my pictures but what dorchen no gir there were many underwater creatures that immediately eat everything including crabs and there was a strong current there the crab dr. Campbell was in Sydney T Cheney Nagar Vinny appeared caboose wattmeter for a month at a depth of over 200 meters they're trying to fetch human remains from underneath a heap of plane debris Australia Jewish the remains were taken to the seashore and doctors start putting body parts together to determine how many people there were young is nary deserted identifying the remains was impossible in fact authorities were unable to prove conclusively that the body parts had even come from passengers of KL double-oh-seven there were very few remains from the crash occurring airlines 0:07 and we now know that the Soviet ships had actually found the wreckage and they did not either salvage the cargo or find ways to give back to the families anything of the possessions or the bodies of the passengers there is speculation that any remains that were either recovered from the wreckage or they washed on shore were destroyed by the Soviets because they did not want evidence of what they had discovered so what had happened to the bodies how could they have vanished some experts believe that the aeroplane and its passengers were obliterated upon impact if the wreckage is seriously torn apart and just in small pieces we'd have to assume that it had a lot of airspeed and a lot of impact when it hit the water conversely if fuselage and other parts of the airplane are largely intact then you'd have to assume a lesser impact but still enough to kill everybody on the airplane kaal double-oh-seven certainly could have disintegrated upon crashing into the ocean the same way many planes do when they crash into the ground still many relatives of the victims felt that the lack of remains indicated that there must have been survivors there are still some family members who would like to believe that their loved one is alive you know if they're being held hostage in prison in Siberia the fact that there are very few personal effects that were found means that there is no closure for the family members they had no memorabilia of their loved one that they could bury and have a place to go grieve over in 1993 Russian journalist Andre Ilyas organized a second dive to the crash site to search for clues he invited Makar gears to help with the investigation the main question still engendering needs is why no corpses were found the task was to raise numbered parts of the plane and dissipate the ridiculous theories that this was the wrong plane and the Russians for hiding something I received the numbered parts so that we could send them to Borinquen Seattle and prove that they belong to that specific plane Ilyas personally retrieved several items from the seabed he says these prove there were no survivors that KL double-oh-seven disintegrated this is inflatable lifejacket you can see that it belonged to Korean Airlines the passenger apparently didn't have time to put it on it all happened very fast we brought this up from the bottom during our expedition it was held down by big metal parts otherwise it would have floated up and been carried away by the current do Swift currents scavengers and time account for the surprising scarcity of crash debris and human remains and there's still the question of where the Soviet missiles connected with the Korean passenger play had kale double-oh-seven already past into neutral and supposedly safe airspace or was it over sakhalin island and its top-secret military bases and if the former why did the USSR withhold the black boxes from international investigators for nearly ten years for almost ten years the shooting down of Korean Air flight double-oh-seven was shrouded in mystery finally in 1992 the Russian Federation relinquished the planes black boxes to Korean authorities a second official investigation released in May of 1993 concluded that the Soviet Defense Forces had exercised proper conduct and made every attempt to identify and warn the passenger plane before firing on it the report also concluded that the fighter pilot had attacked the 747 in Soviet airspace Jim Oberg an expert on Soviet disasters disagrees Oberg noticed but on page 10 of the 1993 report the exact coordinates of where the plane was struck by the missiles were listed as was the time and how far off course the 747 had flown according to the ICAO report the target was hit at 6:25 p.m. at the time KL double-oh-seven was 350 nautical miles to the right of airway r20 the coordinates of the location are 46 degrees north and 141 degrees east most precise data was from the Russian tracking data itself and in a supplement to the report at 93 the Russian government and the military provided tracking data which onion be your slideshow the aircraft out past the 12-mile limit are you telling me that Korean Airlines flight double-oh-seven was shot down outside of Soviet airspace by a few miles not by much but clearly passed it in international waters when the missile was launched it had already crossed the 12-mile limit back into international waters where it was destroyed these incriminating coordinates come from the Russians themselves the reconstruction of the trajectory using the black box data and computer modeling still gave a little uncertainty of a few miles but it's the Russian data from their own radar sites and numeric values of the position that they gave in 1992 that when plot on the map show where it was attacked even so was there any reasonable justification for the attack the Soviet interceptors did not follow the international standards for intercepting aircraft that might be hostile over a country's own airspace those standards require that if there is a concern about an airplane being over your country's airspace not being identified that the interceptors are to go up and flash lights waggle their wings try to make radio contact to try to do something to get the attention of the intercepted airplane nobody can suggest believably that the Russians the Soviets were justified in doing what they did to KL 0:07 in 1983 because among other things it presented no clear threat to them it had already transited all their airspace it was going to transit in fact when they attacked it it had already exited their airspace and was back out in international airspace proceeding on toward Japan I don't believe the the attack was justified because the fighter really didn't try to follow the standard procedures to identify this aircraft and warned it if it had gone up close enough to get next to it and alert the pilots he certainly should have been able to identify it as a civil aircraft the attack was absolutely not justified because the procedures required by international law for a nun Gennifer aircraft involve identification procedures getting the attention of the pilot giving them a chance to respond to follow you to an airfield those steps the Soviets said they took and they lied padamu we had no choice we had to destroy the Boeing passengers and no passengers and this is a big question I mean anybody could have been flying this plane no boom people got to Boyle there is past history where the governments who accept responsibility for causing death or injury we still believe is important the Soviet Union or Russia now to do the same thing for the families of people that were shot down the last flight of Korean Airlines double-oh-seven will always provoke controversy even though the Cold War is long over the official finding of the International Civil Aviation Organization remains that the Korean aeroplane flew off course due to pilot error and that the Soviets truly believed that it was a spy plane because knowledge the order to destroy was made in absolute conviction and was executed on this basis that this was a spy plane which intruded very deeply about 500 miles into the territory of a sovereign state as many experts remain unconvinced it's at night it was running with lights it was maintaining a straight and level course the transponder which the Russians would have been able to read with their radar was operating the rotating beacons were operating and this is just not consistent with an RC 135 it's possible that the truth lies somewhere in between Korean Air flight double-oh-seven ended tragically because of a series of errors not just one the Soviets truly believed that this was a spy plane right up until or during the shoot down they certainly would not have ordered the shoot down of a civil aircraft if they knew it was what we need to understand how these decisions were made you must imagine the rampant paranoia the pilot said it would be a civilian plane any servicemen should have understood his job was not to analyze but to report what she saw no one's hands are clean in this story yes no one is varying a spotless shirt everybody used this tragedy for their own game there is no justice in this story nor decent side everybody the American side the Korean side and the Russian sides all are somewhat guilty you

Info

Channel: Mila Barts

Views: 433,063

Rating: 4.6410532 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentary english, history, history channel, civil, civil war, culture, project, report, report english, ABC, BBC, CNCS, Airlines, Fighter, Soviet Fighter, Commerica, Shot Down Commerical Airline, Discovery Channel, History (TV Channel), Civil War (Literature Subject), Soviet Union (Country), Civil War (album)

Id: jtXQTfRFh7o

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 45min 50sec (2750 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2013

Reddit Comments

Lost a friend on that flight. I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been. If it turns out Russia was involved with today's plane crash, that will make it two for two.

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/adventuremike 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

In the avalanche of Russia hate, lets remember that we(USA) shot down an Iranian passenger Jet in 1988.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

👍︎︎ 33 👤︎︎ u/ridiculous434 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

Very relevant, considering today's events.

👍︎︎ 7 👤︎︎ u/JASSM-ER 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

Don't forget the U.S. also downed a passenger in 1988 killing 290. It was an Iranian commercial flight. The U.S. never apologized

👍︎︎ 13 👤︎︎ u/Tommy27 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

So... Moscow has a history of shooting down civil airliners...

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

It's not quite "proven" but in 2010 Russia had a hand in bringing down that Polish plane with government officials in Smolensk.

Scummy fucks

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/makehersquirtz 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

I learned that the United States admitted a little fault in this as well. In order for us to spy the most effectively we would send our spy planes to coast beneath commercial airliners to hide from their radar. The planes would position themselves so the pilots of the airliner could not see them. The fighter jet saw this and took a pot shot at the spy plane, obviously missing and hitting the airliner.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies

It pisses me off having to listen to these stupid translations with an american voice actor imitating the "Russian accent" when speaking in English. I can't be the only person on earth who gets EXTREMELY annoyed with that.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/koumus 📅︎︎ Oct 12 2014 🗫︎ replies

All I have to do is listen to the intro song and hear Robert Stacks voice and I'm scared for my life

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/3ringangel 📅︎︎ Jul 18 2014 🗫︎ replies