A tragic Cold War incident took place in September 1983 when a civil airliner, Korean Air Lines flight KAL 007, heading for Seoul from Anchorage in Alaska, was shot down by Soviet fighter jets with the loss of 269 passengers and crew.
At first, the Soviets only admitted to an incident with an 'unidentified aircraft' which they claimed had violated their airspace, but later admitted that they had shot down the airliner, a Boeing 747, having insisted that the aircraft (flying in the dark) had violated Soviet airspace, was flying with no navigation lights and did not respond to communication.
Investigations, hampered somewhat by Soviet refusals to hand over evidence including the flight recorders, concluded that the aircraft had deviated from its scheduled course because of an error in the navigation system, which had not been spotted by the flight crew.
With the loss of all on board, including a sitting US congressman and 22 children under the age of 12, the incident increased an already-tense Cold War situation. The shooting was condemned by then US President Ronald Reagan, who subsequently ordered the banning of civilian flights by the Soviet airline Aeroflot to the United States.
It wasn't until the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the election of Boris Yeltsin as Russian President, that more details emerged. Yeltsin authorised the release of top-secret memos and the fight recorders themselves, which bore out the theory that the aircraft had mistakenly deviated from its scheduled path.
Ultimately, the loss of 269 victims who had no connection, or interest in global politics was a black day, being as they were innocent victims of two global superpowers faced off against each other.
Artist's impression of KAL 007 (Wikipedia)
No comments:
Post a Comment