Flight 007

[Isan]

On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines flight 007, on its way from Anchorage, Alaska to Seoul, Korea, carrying 269 passengers and crew, strayed off its intended course and entered into Soviet airspace.　A Soviet Sukhoi 15 fighter jet, piloted by Major Gennadie Osipovich, was sent up to destroy the intruding Boeing 747.

This, at the height of the Cold War era, was a major international incident.　At the time, it was - and still is - widely believed that the plane "exploded", "plummeted uncontrollably" into the ocean, and was "destroyed", killing all aboard, including Lawrence ("Larry") Patton McDonald, Representative (D), 7th District, Georgia.

The evidence, however, tells another story.　Japanese radar trackings, Soviet ground-to-ground and ground-to-air communications, KAL 007's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, the debris (and lack thereof), eye-witness testimonies... All these and more, when pieced together, tell of a plane which was, indeed, damaged, but which managed to land safely, and of passengers who survived and were rescued by the Russians -- only to be imprisoned to this day.

More TRUE if you're interesting

[musang]

i clicked on the link and only the image appeared.. so how do i find out more on the story?

[ignoramus]

This is freaky...

[Isan]

Originally Posted by musang

i clicked on the link and only the image appeared.. so how do i find out more on the story?

Sorry
The link would be there

oo7

[Sinjin P.]

wow

[musang]

*perplexed*

Isan, has any of the survivors made any attempts to 'tell the whole world' about it? i did not go thru the link thoroughly but this is interesting..

[e888]

My dad,who's an airline pilot,in the 1980s was an Iberia-B 747 First Officer and flew the Madrid-Tokyo route through what was called "The Polar Route" ( Madrid-Anchorage-Tokyo).

He's told me that often times,in the Anchorage-Tokyo flight they received strange indications that diverted them from the normal pathway and led them very close to the Soviet Air Border.Technically,there were no clear facts that could explain such phenomenon and,apparently,it's something that happened to other airlines that flew the same route ( such as British Airways).

There were some internal communications on those incidents,and,according to what a Lufthansa pilot told my father( a friend of his),the Germans had the suspicion that there were interferences emitted from U.S.military bases on the area,forcing foreign airplanes to trespass the Soviet border and cause therefore an international incident ( such as the tragic KAL 007 that took place).

Nonetheless,that was never confirmed.


...

[Isan]

KAL 007: More Lies and Cover-up
by Robert W. Lee

On November 19th, during a three-day visit to South Korea, Russian President Boris Yeltsin handed over to President Roh Tai Woo what were alleged to be the long-sought "black boxes" containing the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) from Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the Boeing 747 jumbo jet which the Soviets shot down on September 1, 1983. Until 1991, the Soviets and Russians had denied having the black boxes. In October 1992, Yeltsin released purported CVR transcripts and a declassified memorandum regarding the FDR, but claimed that the black boxes themselves had been dismantled and were being held by the Soviet Defense Ministry.

The surprise presentation of the black boxes to President Roh was accompanied by great fanfare and media coverage. According to a November 19th Agence France Presse dispatch, Yeltsin told Roh: "I turn over the material to you hoping that the truth of the incident will come to light leaving no suspicion."

The Toronto Star for November 21st awarded Boris Yeltsin a laudatory "laurel" for "turning over the flight data and voice recorders .... Yeltsin's gesture cannot bring back the victims of that atrocity but it does show there is a new morality in Moscow."

Hardly. On November 30th, a Seoul transport ministry spokesman revealed that one of the black boxes, supposedly containing the FDR tapes, was empty, while the other black box contained only copies (not originals) of four CVR tapes. Two of the latter had been recorded backwards, while the others were virtually unintelligible due to background noise.

Russian Runaround

Korean Ambassador to Russia Hong Sun-yong was dispatched to the Kremlin to demand an explanation. As reported by the New York Times on December 3rd, Russia acknowledged "that it knew that the FDR tapes had been removed" from their black box. "Left unclear," the Times noted, "was why Mr. Yeltsin had not made this known to the Koreans" at the time of the presentation. Ambassador Hong "was told by Yuri Petrov, a senior Yeltsin aide, that the original tapes had been withheld because Russia planned to provide them to an international investigative body" that the Russian president had proposed during his trip to Seoul.

On December 2nd, it was announced that Russia had unilaterally scheduled the conference for the following week. Representatives from Russia, South Korea, Japan, and the United States, and an observer from the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), convened in Moscow on December 8th for a two-day confab, but Yeltsin once again failed to surrender the original tapes. Supposedly, "all relevant materials" being held by the four countries are now to be given to the ICAO. During the meeting, Acting U.S. Ambassador to Moscow James Collins claimed that Washington had pertinent materials on KAL 007 that had not yet been made public, but which he said would be turned over to the ICAO. This statement amounted to a formal acknowledgment that the U.S. government has been less than candid with the American people about KAL 007.

It has long been the contention of many who have studied all available evidence that KAL 007 was not destroyed by the Soviet missile attack, and did not crash into the Sea of Japan killing all on board, but instead suffered damage which compelled it to make an emergency landing on Soviet-controlled Sakhalin Island.

During the first hours after the attack, that is exactly what the world was told had happened. Korean Air Lines sent another aircraft to pick up the KAL 007 passengers, and the office of U.S. Representative Larry McDonald (D-GA), a passenger on the plane, was informed by a Federal Aviation Administration duty officer that the Japanese self-defense force had confirmed that Japanese radar "followed Air Korea to a landing in Soviet territory on the island of Sakhalinska...." It was not until the Soviets issued a denial that the story was altered to fit the "crash" hypothesis which key elements of the episode do not support.

Contradictory Evidence

KAL 007 was about five-and-one-half hours into its approximately eight-hour flight from Anchorage, Alaska to Seoul when it was hit by at least one missile fired by a Soviet SU-15 tactical fighter at around 3:25 a.m. (Japan time). For reasons still a mystery, the jumbo jet had flown into Soviet territory some two hours earlier and had just passed over the southern tip of Sakhalin Island. Its altitude was 35,000 feet. Here is a brief synopsis of some (by no means all) of the data that conflicts with the "crash" hypothesis:

• Following the attack, the jetliner's communications system remained operational for a brief period. The pilot informed air traffic control (ATC) in Tokyo that a decompression had occurred, asserted that the aircraft was descending to 10,000 feet (standard procedure in the wake of a cabin decompression), and asked for instructions. There were no "Mayday" transmissions as would be expected if the plane was out of control.

• KAL 007 was tracked on radar at 5,000 meters (about 16,000 feet) after four minutes, which meant that it had descended to that point at an average rate of 4,750 feet per minute. It disappeared from radar eight minutes later, at an estimated altitude of 1,000 feet, indicating a descent rate over that eight-minute period of less than 2,000 feet per minute. The drastic change in rate of descent is strong evidence that the crew was in control. It is standard procedure for the crew of a jetliner that has endured a cabin decompression to descend swiftly to a level where there is more abundant oxygen and a warmer temperature, then reduce the descent rate while seeking a place to land. If KAL 007 had plummeted into the sea, it would have been airborne for only about two minutes, not 12-plus minutes.

• Soviet fighter pilots were unsuccessful in their attempts to locate signs of wreckage on the ocean surface after the attack. Their radio transmissions included such statements as "I don't see it," "No I don't see it," and, about 12 minutes after the attack, "I don't see anything in this area. I just looked."

• Unlike other aircraft disasters, no bodies confirmed to have come from KAL 007 were recovered. Two bodies and a total of 13 body parts were found, but such remains are readily explained by the cabin decompression, during which a gust reaching perhaps 700 miles per hour for a few seconds would have expelled loose debris, and possibly some passengers, from the plane.

• The minuscule amount of aircraft wreckage was glaringly inconsistent with that left in the wake of other aircraft disasters. The largest piece of the plane recovered was a fragment of vertical tail fin measuring approximately 30 inches by 36 inches.

• The small amount of debris from inside the plane is also inconsistent with a "crash," but compatible with a cabin decompression. And especially so since the debris appears to have come solely from the cabin (calling cards, passports, books, dentures, seat cushions, oxygen masks, etc.). There were no large pieces of luggage, shipping crates, or other items that would usually be transported in the cargo pit.

The Transcripts

The one-page flight data recorder memorandum released by Russian President Yeltsin did not describe the plane's altitudes, descent rates, or directions of flight after (or for that matter before) the attack. It simply catalogued such details as the number of "analog parameters," "recording [parameter] lines," and "onetime commands." The memo asserted that some of the parameters could be "reconstructed and decoded," thereby making it "possible to construct the route and to determine flight mode and profile," but no such construction was presented. According to the memo, 14 "recording (parameter) lines" had not been identified, conveniently including "the flight segment after the aircraft was hit," thereby enabling the memo's author to conclude that "these parameters do not contain useful information on the route, mode of operation, or profile of the South Korean aircraft's flight." Considered in the context of the FDR tapes missing from the black box given to South Korea in November, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the FDR data has been withheld, and will likely be altered before release, in an attempt to prevent confirmation of details the Russians do not wish to have confirmed.

According to the transcripts released by the Russians, the early minutes of the cockpit voice recordings entail the sort of banter that one would expect, including a cabin announcement at about 2:55 a.m. that "We will be landing in 3 hours; we are offering breakfast." Most of the conversation is between KAL 007 (then cruising at 33,000 feet) and KAL 015 (another Boeing 747 headed for Seoul some 15 minutes behind KAL 007 at 35,000 feet). At 3:07 a.m., KAL 015 appears to ask KAL 007 if the latter can increase altitude to 35,000 feet. KAL 007 replies "We can," after which KAL 015 requests permission from Tokyo air traffic control to ascend to 37,000 feet. Clearance is given, and KAL 007 in turn requests authorization to climb to 35,000 feet. At 3:21, KAL 007 reports that it has "occupied flight level three, five, zero [35,000 feet]."

And then trouble. At 3:24:38 (hour, minutes, seconds), according to one of the transcripts, there is an "Alarm in cockpit. General noise, shouts: 'Climb!' 'It isn't working.'" A second transcript gives a somewhat different account: "Shouts of alarm. Activation of emergency signalling system in the cockpit. General noise, shouts: 'smoke,' 'on that side,' 'climb,' 'it won't do it.'" At 3:24:53, a pre-recorded cabin announcement is broadcast in Korean, English, and Japanese: "Emergency descent. Fasten seat belts. Put on oxygen masks." That message is repeated to the end of the voice recorder tape. Meanwhile:

3:25:16: "Tokyo, this is Korean Air zero, zero, seven."

3:25:24: "Korean Air zero, zero, seven, this is Tokyo."

3:25:27: "This is Korean Air zero, zero, seven ... Do not break contact, give instructions ["directions" in some translations] ... We have ... rapid ... compression ... am descending to one, zero thousand [10,000 feet] ."

3:26:03: "Korean Air zero, zero, seven. I did not copy, did not copy you ... unintelligible ... go to one, zero, dot .... "

End of tape.

According to the transcripts, there was no further response from KAL 007, a detail which has been widely reported to mean that KAL 007 either exploded or crashed into the sea at that point. But the jetliner was tracked on radar for more than ten additional minutes, and was monitored at 16,000 feet four minutes after the attack. Moreover, the request for "instructions" (or "directions") is highly significant, as this would be an unlikely request for the pilot of an out-of-control aircraft to make.

Several Versions

Lieutenant Colonel Gennadiy Nikolayevich Osipovich, the Soviet pilot who fired the missiles, told Izvestia in 1991 that Soviet radar lost track of the jetliner ten minutes after the attack while KAL 007 was still above 16,000 feet. But Izvestia reporter Andrei Illesh claimed that the aircraft "dove into the water at approximately the speed of sound" at the end of a ten-minute fall.

One of the documents released by Boris Yeltsin on October 14th was a November 1983 report to then-Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov, claiming that the Soviets had "discovered the fuselage and cabin" of the downed jet at a point "in international waters, 8 kilometers [about five miles] from the territorial waters of the USSR...." But in 1991, in a series of articles on the incident, Izvestia reported that remains of the jetliner were located just inside the 12 mile airspace claimed by the Soviets, "approximately at the 11th mile" off Moneron Island, which is 30 miles southwest of Sakhalin's southern tip.

Some of Izvestia's sources claimed that the jumbo jet had been located largely intact and that Soviet navy divers "'climbed all over' the KAL plane from top to bottom." But the newspaper also quoted the leader of a team of divers as stating that the plane "was blown to pieces." The same source was quoted in another article as claiming that the aircraft was found "exactly on the third day" of a search that began "at the end of September," which would mean no later than October 3rd. But he was then quoted in another article in the series as saying that "we discovered the plane 17 or 18 October." One of the 1983 documents released by Boris Yeltsin in 1992 claims that the "fuselage and cockpit" were discovered on "October 20th."

One Izvestia source claimed that the jetliner slammed into the sea so hard that it was "literally ripped to shreds," and that divers found "scraps no greater than a meter or two in size." The bodies of the passengers and crew were alleged to have "disintegrated" when the plane hit the sea because of the force of the impact. But the captain of an ocean fishing base alleged that a drilling ship was "anchored right over the fuselage of the Boeing." And Izvestia's Andrei Illesh told South Korea's Yonhap news agency on November 30, 1992, without the slightest shred of documentation, that Soviet authorities had salvaged parts of the jetliner, along with bodies and luggage, and had moved them to an unknown location in seven rail freight cars.

At one time or another, the Soviets or Russians have reported that after ten minutes KAL 007 was thousands of feet in the air and crashing into the sea, that it went down in and out of Soviet territory, and that it was discovered largely intact and blown to pieces in early and late October. These and other blatant contradictions have been allowed to go unchallenged by the major U.S. media and our State Department.

Timing

One of the many puzzling aspects of the transcripts is the time factor. A transcript of the conversation which Lieutenant Colonel Osipovich and the other Soviet pilots had with ground control was included in the ICAO's December 1983 report entitled Destruction of Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 Over Sea of Japan, 31 August 1983 (Greenwich Mean Time). According to the transcript, Osipovich did not declare, "I have executed the launch," until 3:26:20. However, the transcripts released by Yeltsin pinpoint the cockpit alarm at 3:24:38, nearly two minutes before the ICAO transcript indicates that the missiles were fired. Conceivably, the discrepancy could be explained by a lack of coordinated timing. Or, it could mean that transcripts have been tampered with. Agence France Presse reported on November 15th that the South Korean delegation had "said the material [which Yeltsin released in October] was insufficient and the transcripts of cockpit conversations and contacts with ground stations appeared to have been expurgated."

According to the 1983 ICAO report: "Between 1827:10 [Greenwich Mean Time; 3:27:10 a.m. Japan time] and 1827:25 hours Tokyo Radio received a partly intelligible transmission from KE007" in which "the following words were discernible: Korean Air zero zero seven ... (Unintelligible) ... rapid compressions ... (unintelligible) ... descending to one zero thousand." Note that the important phrase "give instructions" (or "directions"), among others -- as indicated by the Yeltsin-released transcripts -- was deemed "unintelligible" in the ICAO account.

There is also the question of why the CVR and FDR tapes ended so soon after the attack. Such tapes do not "run out" in the sense of coming to an end as an ordinary recording tape would do. They are continuous loops that record the previous 30 minutes of cockpit conversation throughout a flight. A crash or mid-air explosion would explain the termination, but again, KAL 007 was tracked on radar for at least 12 minutes, during which time its descent rate varied from relatively fast to slow, which is hardly characteristic of a plane that has blown up.

Pilots with whom we have discussed the matter are baffled by the tapes' abrupt termination, especially since termination occurs at exactly the point when Tokyo begins to respond to the crew's request for instructions (or directions). The question of whether the transcripts and/or tapes were altered to prevent the public from learning what those instructions (or directions) were, and the extent to which KAL 007 followed them, remains to be answered.

CIA Surmises Survivors?

In late October, South Korean legislator Sonn Se-il, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, claimed that he had obtained a classified CIA report speculating that at least some KAL 007 passengers and crew may have survived. The 57-year-old lawmaker told reporters that he had received the document, marked "top secret/codeword," about one month earlier, but would not disclose his source. The authenticity of the report, which is a 17-page summary of a lengthier document said to run about 80 pages, has not been confirmed as we write, but Reuters news service obtained a copy and published key portions of its contents on October 26th.

According to Reuters, the document states that the Boeing 747 "probably successfully ditched, there probably were survivors, the Soviets lied massively and diplomatic efforts need to be made to return the survivors." The report is undated, but its conclusions are partly based on an analysis of two crashes of other Boeing 747s, one of which occurred in late 1987, which would suggest that the report was prepared in 1988 or later.

Noting that only two items were positively identified as specifically related to KAL 007 from among some 848 small pieces of "wreckage" turned over by Soviet authorities, the report asserts that had KAL 007 exploded or slammed into sea, a large volume of debris should have been scattered over the crash area. In comparison to the remains recovered from the other crashes, the "debris associated with KAL-007 has been likened to that from a Piper Cub."

The Reuters account observed that the report, citing "knowledge of Soviet radar tracking techniques obtained by special intelligence and more limited data provided by Japanese military radar," had "concluded the plane remained in the air for at least 12 minutes."

The report also notes that four hours after the downing of KAL 007, the Soviet military knew from pilots that a civilian jetliner, not a military reconnaissance plane, had been shot down, and that Americans were on board. Had the jumbo jet been involved in a catastrophic crash, the fact that it was a civilian airliner and the nationalities of its passengers would have been extremely difficult to ascertain in so short a time, "especially by Soviet pilots reporting from the air."

Crash Comparison

The two disasters which the report cites for comparison to KAL 007 are indeed instructive. In 1983, no Boeing 747 had previously been destroyed by a mid-air explosion and out-of-control crash into the sea, so there were no precise precedents for what supposedly happened to KAL 007. Then, on June 23, 1985, Air-India Flight 182 crashed into the Atlantic near the coast of Ireland, the victim of a terrorist bombing. The huge jetliner hurtled into the ocean, as KAL 007 is alleged to have done, from an altitude of 31,000 feet, killing all 329 persons on board. That same day, a search recovered 123 bodies. The next day, another eight were retrieved. Four months later, another was found strapped in its seat in a large section of the fuselage raised from the ocean floor. A British Royal Navy doctor reported that bodies he saw were "badly shattered and broken but all in one piece."

Many huge pieces (totaling about four tons) of the airliner were found. On July 10, 1985, the voice data recorder was retrieved from the tail section at a depth of about 6,700 feet. The next day, an underwater robot located and recovered the flight data recorder.

The South African Airways disaster mentioned in the alleged CIA report occurred on November 28, 1987, when the jetliner and the 160 persons on board crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Island of Mauritius. Debris was scattered over 150 square miles. The next day, UPI reported: "Four badly mutilated bodies were recovered Monday ... increasing to nine the number of victims recovered." The Washington Post also reported on November 29th that South Africa's transport minister "told reporters ... that passengers in another South African Airways jumbo jet carrying investigating officials to Mauritius had also spotted wreckage, including suitcases and an empty rubber life raft." Exactly one year after the crash, it was announced that the world's deepest ocean search for wreckage had located "a large piece" of the jet on the ocean floor at 12,000 feet. (The water depth where KAL 007 was attacked ranged from 500 to 2,700 feet.)

Note that searchers were still looking for (and locating) bodies and debris four months after the Air-India tragedy, and were looking for South African Airways wreckage one year after that crash. But in the case of KAL 007, the U.S. called off its search on November 7, 1983; Japan terminated its search effort two days later; and the ICAO wrapped up its investigation and issued its report in December 1983. There were no meaningful congressional investigations, and the State Department, after co-opting the KAL 007 investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board, refused to conduct an inquiry of its own.

During a news conference on October 25, 1992, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was asked about the alleged CIA document, which he admitted he had not seen. Regarding the possibility of survivors, he told reporters: "In our view, the claim is false. We had no information that would indicate that there are survivors of the KAL crash. There are other groups that have asserted as well that there were survivors, but they have never substantiated their allegations." To substantiate his own position, Boucher continued: "During recent talks with President Yeltsin, in fact, our delegation asked about possible survivors of the crash. President Yeltsin replied that there had been no survivors, and we have no reason to doubt the Russian government's statement."

There is, of course, plenty of reason to doubt the Russian government's statement. To reprise the concluding paragraph of our in-depth analysis of this crucial issue in THE NEW AMERICAN for September 10, 1991: "It is time for Americans to unite in demanding the truth about what happened to KAL 007 and an accounting of its passengers and crew. Let the chips fall (and heads roll) where they may."