title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: The aircraft has been delivered in four series. The Series 100 has a maximum capacity of 39, the Series 200 has the same capacity but offers more powerful engines, the Series 300 is a stretched, 50-seat version, and the Series 400 is further stretched to a maximum of 90 passengers. Models delivered after 1997 have cabin noise suppression and are designated with the prefix "Q". Production of the Series 100 ceased in 2005, followed by the 200 and 300 in 2009, leaving the Q400 as the only series still in production.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: The Series 100 was the original 37- to 39-passenger version of the Dash 8 that entered service in 1984. The original engine was the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW120 and later units used the PW121. Rated engine power is 1,800 shp (1,340 kW).


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: The Series 200 aircraft maintained the same 37–39 passenger airframe as the original Series 100, but was re-engined for improved performance. The Series 200 used the more powerful Pratt & Whitney Canada PW123 engines rated at 2,150 shp (1,600 kW).


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: The Series 300 introduced a longer airframe that was stretched over the Series 100/200 and has a passenger capacity of 50–56. The Series 300 also used the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW123 engines. Rated engine power is between 2,380 shp (1,774 kW) and 2,500 shp (1,864 kW). Design service life is 80,000 flight cycles. Under an extended service program launched in 2017, the service life of Dash 8-300 is extended by 50 per cent, or approximately 15 years, to 120,000 flight cycles.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: The Series 400 introduced an even longer airframe that was stretched over the Series 300 ( over the Series 100/200), has a larger, stouter T-tail and has a passenger capacity of 68–90. The Series 400 uses Pratt & Whitney Canada PW150A engines rated at 4,850 shp (3,620 kW). The aircraft has a cruise speed of 360 knots (667 km/h), which is 60–90 knots (111–166 km/h) higher than its predecessors. The maximum operating altitude is 25,000 ft (7,600 m) for the standard version, although a version with drop-down oxygen masks is offered, which increases maximum operating altitude to 27,000 ft (8,200 m).


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: Between its service entry in 2000 and the 2018 sale to Longview/Viking, 585 have been delivered at a rate of 30-35 per year, leaving a backlog of 65, for a market value at a stable level of $21 million new.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: By 2017, the Q400 aircraft had logged 7 million flight hours with 60 operators and transported over 400 million passengers with a dispatch reliability over 99.5%.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: By July 2018, 844 Dash 8s were in airline service: 143 Series 100 with 35 operators, 42 Series 200 with 16 operators, 151 Series 300 with 32 operators and 508 Q400s.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: In September 2007, two separate accidents of similar landing gear failures occurred within four days of each other on Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Dash 8-Q400 aircraft. A third accident occurred in October 2007, leading to the withdrawal of the type from the airline's fleet.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: On September 9, 2007, the crew of SAS Flight 1209, en route from Copenhagen to Aalborg, reported problems with the locking mechanism of the right side landing gear, and Aalborg Airport was prepared for an emergency landing. Shortly after touchdown the right main gear collapsed and the airliner skidded off the runway while fragments of the right propeller shot against the cabin and the right engine caught fire. Of 69 passengers and four crew on board, 11 were sent to hospital, five with minor injuries. The accident was filmed by a local news channel (TV2-Nord) and broadcast live on national television.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: Three days later, on September 12, Scandinavian Airlines Flight 2748 from Copenhagen to Palanga had a similar problem with the landing gear, forcing the aircraft to land in Vilnius international airport (Lithuania). No passengers or crew were injured. Immediately after this accident SAS grounded all 33 Q400 airliners in its fleet and, a few hours later, Bombardier recommended that all Q400s with more than 10,000 flights be grounded until further notice. This affected about 60 aircraft, out of 140 Q400s then in service.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: On October 27, 2007, Scandinavian Airlines Flight 2867 en route from Bergen to Copenhagen had severe problems with the landing gear during landing in Kastrup Airport. The right wing gear did not deploy properly (or partially), and the aircraft skidded off the runway in a controlled emergency landing. The Q400 was carrying 38 passengers, two infants and four crew members on board. No injuries were reported. The next day, SAS permanently removed its entire Dash 8 Q400 fleet from service. In a press release on October 28, 2007, the company's president said: "Confidence in the Q400 has diminished considerably and our customers are becoming increasingly doubtful about flying in this type of aircraft. Accordingly, with the Board of Directors' approval, I have decided to immediately remove Dash 8 Q400 aircraft from service." The preliminary Danish investigation determined the latest Q400 incident was unrelated to the airline's earlier corrosion problems, in this particular case caused by a misplaced O-ring found blocking the orifice in the restrictor valve.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: In all, eight Q400s had landing gear failures while landing during 2007: four in Denmark, one in Germany, one in Japan, one in Lithuania and one in South Korea. In November 2007, it was revealed that the Swedish Civil Aviation Administration had begun an investigation and found Scandinavian Airlines System culpable of cutting corners in its maintenance department. The airline reportedly made 2,300 flights in which safety equipment was not up to standard. On March 10, 2008, SAS ordered 27 more aircraft from Bombardier in a compensation deal: 14 Q400 NextGen turboprops and 13 CRJ900 jets.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: On February 23, 2017, a Flybe Q400 suffered a right hand gear collapse while landing at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. There were no injuries. The cause was identified as a deformed righthand main landing gear brace, which had been installed the night before. It is not known when the deformation had occurred.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: On November 10, 2017, a Flybe flight BE331, operated by a Q400, was scheduled to fly from George Best Belfast City Airport to Inverness Airport. The plane reported a technical problem shortly after takeoff and was diverted to Belfast International Airport, where it landed on its nose with the front gear retracted. One minor injury was reported.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: On August 19, 2018, a Q400-200 of LC Peru on a flight from Lima to Ayacucho had to return to Lima and make an emergency landing due to a nose gear that could not be lowered. The aircraft landed without the nose gear down.


title: De Havilland Canada Dash 8

text: On November 15, 2018, a Q300-315 belonging to PAL Airlines was unable to lower its nose gear while trying to land at Deer Lake, Newfoundland, diverted to Stephenville, Newfoundland and carried out a nose gear up landing.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 – June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the song "Come On-a My House", which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me", "Mambo Italiano", "Tenderly", "Half as Much", "Hey There", "This Ole House", and "Sway". She also had success as a jazz vocalist. Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly because of problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1977, when her "White Christmas" co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. She continued recording until her death in 2002.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, the daughter of Marie Frances (née Guilfoyle) and Andrew Joseph Clooney. She was one of five children. Her father was of Irish and German descent, and her mother was of English and Irish ancestry. She was raised Catholic. When Clooney was 15, her mother and brother Nick moved to California. She and her sister Betty remained with their father. The family resided in the John Brett Richeson House in the late 1940s.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Rosemary and Betty became entertainers, whereas Nick became a newsman and television broadcaster (some of her children, including Miguel Ferrer and Rafael Ferrer, and her nephew, George Clooney, also became respected actors and entertainers). In 1945, the Clooney sisters won a spot on Cincinnati's radio station WLW as singers. Rosemary and Betty sang in a duo for much of Rosemary’s early career.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Clooney signed with Columbia and cut her first record with Tony Pastor's big band in 1947, "I'm Sorry I Didn't Say Sorry" b/w "The Lady From Twenty-Nine Palms." She cut 14 sides with the Pastor band before making her solo recording debut in mid-1949 with "Bargain Day" b/w "Cabaret." In 1950–51, she was a regular on the radio and television versions of "Songs For Sale" on CBS. In early 1951, she had a minor hit with "Beautiful Brown Eyes", but her record of "Come On-a My House" four months later, produced by Mitch Miller, became her first big chart hit. Clooney recounted in her memoir that she despised the song, but pop singers in that era seldom had a choice in the material they recorded and she risked being dropped from Columbia if she refused to record it. Clooney recorded several duets with Marlene Dietrich and appeared in the early 1950s on "Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town" series on CBS. She also did several guest appearances on the Arthur Godfrey radio show, when it was sponsored by Lipton Tea. They did duets as he played his ukulele, and other times, she would sing one of her latest hits.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1954, she starred, along with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Vera-Ellen, in the movie "White Christmas". She starred, in 1956, in a half-hour syndicated television musical-variety show, "The Rosemary Clooney Show", which featured The Hi-Lo's singing group and Nelson Riddle's orchestra. The following year, the show moved to NBC prime time as "The Lux Show Starring Rosemary Clooney", but lasted only one season. The new show featured the singing group The Modernaires and Frank DeVol's orchestra. In later years, Clooney often appeared with Bing Crosby on television, such as in the 1957 special "The Edsel Show", and the two friends made a concert tour of Ireland together. On November 21, 1957, she appeared on NBC's "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford", a frequent entry in the "Top 20" and featuring a musical group called "The Top Twenty". In 1960, Clooney and Crosby co-starred in a 20-minute CBS radio program that aired before the midday news each weekday.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: The last major chart hit Clooney had was "I've Grown Accustomed To Your Face", released in May 1956, at which point rock-and-roll was quickly driving established pop singers from the charts.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Clooney left Columbia Records in 1958, doing a number of recordings for MGM Records and then some for Coral Records. Finally, toward the end of 1958, she signed with RCA Victor, where she recorded until 1963. In 1964, she was signed to Reprise Records, and in 1965 to Dot Records.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1976, Clooney signed with United Artists Records for two albums. Beginning in 1977, she recorded an album every year for the Concord Jazz record label, a schedule which continued until her death. This was in contrast to most of her generation of singers, who had long since stopped recording regularly by then. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Clooney did television commercials for Coronet brand paper towels, during which she sang a memorable jingle that went, "Extra value is what you get, when you buy Coro-net." Clooney sang a duet with Wild Man Fischer on "It's a Hard Business" in 1986, and in 1994, she sang a duet of "Green Eyes" with Barry Manilow in his 1994 album, "Singin' with the Big Bands".


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1995, Clooney guest-starred in the NBC television medical drama "ER" (starring her nephew, George Clooney); for her performance, she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. On January 27, 1996, Clooney appeared on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" radio program. She sang "When October Goes"—lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Barry Manilow (after Mercer's death)—from Manilow's 1984 album "", and discussed the excellence of Manilow the musician.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Clooney was also awarded Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. In 1999, she founded the Rosemary Clooney Music Festival, held annually in Maysville, her hometown. She performed at the festival every year until her death. Proceeds benefit the restoration of the Russell Theater in Maysville, where Clooney's first film, "The Stars Are Singing", premiered in 1953.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Clooney was married twice to Puerto Rican movie star José Ferrer, 16 years her senior. Clooney first married Ferrer on June 1, 1953, in Durant, Oklahoma. They moved to Santa Monica, California, in 1954, and then to Los Angeles in 1958. Together, the couple had five children: Miguel, Maria, Gabriel, Monsita, and Rafael. Clooney and Ferrer divorced for the first time in 1961.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Clooney remarried Ferrer on November 22, 1964, in Los Angeles. However, the marriage again crumbled while Ferrer was carrying on an affair with the woman who would become his last wife, Stella Magee. The couple divorced again after she found out about the affair, this time in 1967.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1968, her relationship with a drummer ended after two years. At this time, following a tour, she became increasingly dependent on tranquilizers and sleeping pills.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: She joined the presidential campaign of close friend Robert F. Kennedy, and heard the shots when he was assassinated on June 5, 1968. A month later, she had a nervous breakdown onstage in Reno, Nevada where she began shouting insults to her audience. She was hospitalized and remained in psychoanalytic therapy for eight years.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Her sister Betty died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1976. She subsequently started a foundation in memory of and named for her sister. During this time, she also wrote her first autobiography, "This for Remembrance: the Autobiography of Rosemary Clooney, an Irish-American Singer", written in collaboration with Raymond Strait and published by Playboy Press in 1977. She chronicled her unhappy early life, her career as a singer, her marriage to Ferrer, her mental breakdown in 1968, and the diagnosis of bipolar disorder that seriously disrupted her career, concluding with her comeback as a singer and her happiness. Her good friend Bing Crosby wrote the introduction. Katherine Coker adapted the book for Jackie Cooper, who produced and directed the television movie, "Rosie: the Rosemary Clooney Story" (1982) starring Sondra Locke (who lip synced Clooney's songs), Penelope Milford as Betty, and Tony Orlando as José Ferrer. The 1944-born Locke was 38 at the time, just 16 years Clooney's junior, yet playing her from 17 to 40. Orlando and Locke were the same age, though the real Ferrer was 16 years older than Clooney.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1983, Rosemary and her brother Nick co-chaired the Betty Clooney Foundation for the Brain-Injured, addressing the needs of survivors of cognitive disabilities caused by strokes, tumors, and brain damage from trauma or age.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1997, she married her longtime friend and a former dancer, Dante DiPaolo at St. Patrick's Church in Maysville, Kentucky.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 1999, Clooney published her second autobiography, "Girl Singer: An Autobiography", describing her battles with addiction to prescription drugs for depression, and how she lost and then regained a fortune. "I'd call myself a sweet singer with a big band sensibility," she wrote.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: A longtime heavy smoker, Clooney was diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of 2001. Around this time, she gave one of her last concerts in Hawaii, backed by the Honolulu Symphony Pops; her last song was "God Bless America". Her final show was at Red Bank, New Jersey's Count Basie Theatre in December 2001. Despite surgery and a long period of care following, she died six months later on June 29, 2002, at her Beverly Hills home. Her nephew, George Clooney, was a pallbearer at her funeral. She is buried at Saint Patrick's Cemetery, Maysville.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Clooney lived for many years in Beverly Hills, California, in the house formerly owned by George and Ira Gershwin at 1019 North Roxbury Drive. It was sold to a developer after her death in 2002, and has since been demolished. In 1980, she purchased a second home on Riverside Drive in Augusta, Kentucky, near Maysville, her childhood hometown. Today, the Augusta house offers viewing of collections of her personal items and memorabilia from many of her films and singing performances.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 2003, Rosemary Clooney was inducted into the Kentucky Women Remembered exhibit and her portrait by Alison Lyne is on permanent display in the Kentucky State Capitol's rotunda.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: Also in 2003, Bette Midler, after many years apart, rejoined forces with Barry Manilow to record "Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook". The album was an instant success, being certified gold by Recording Industry Association of America. One of the songbook selections, "This Ole House", became Midler's first Christian radio single shipped by Rick Hendrix and his positive music movement. The album was nominated for a Grammy the following year.


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In 2005, the album "Reflections of Rosemary" by Debby Boone was released. Boone, who was Clooney's daughter-in-law, intended the album to be a musical portrait of Clooney, or as Boone put it: "I wanted to select songs that would give an insight into Rosemary from a family perspective".


title: Rosemary Clooney

text: In September 2007, a mural honoring moments from her life was painted in downtown Maysville; it highlights the 1953 premiere of "The Stars are Singing" and her singing career. It was painted by Louisiana muralists Robert Dafford, Herb Roe, and Brett Chigoy as part of the Maysville Floodwall Murals project. Her brother Nick Clooney spoke during the dedication for the mural, explaining various images to the crowd.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007) was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the flight was shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but owing to a navigational mistake made by the crew, the airliner drifted from its original planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace around the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots which were probably not seen by the KAL pilots. The Korean airliner eventually crashed in the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Larry McDonald, a United States representative. The Soviet Union found the wreckage under the sea two weeks later on September 15 and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret until 1992.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The Soviet Union initially denied knowledge of the incident, but later admitted to shooting down the aircraft, claiming that it was on a MASINT spy mission. The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States to probe the Soviet Union's military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The US accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations. The Soviet Armed Forces suppressed evidence sought by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) investigation, such as the flight recorders, which were released ten years later, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The incident was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War and resulted in an escalation of anti-Soviet sentiment, particularly in the United States.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: As a result of the incident, the United States altered tracking procedures for aircraft departing from Alaska.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The aircraft flying as Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was a Boeing 747-230B jet airliner with Boeing serial number 20559. The aircraft first flew on January 28, 1972 and was delivered on March 17, 1972, to German airline Condor with the registration D-ABYH. It was sold to the ITEL Corporation in February 1979 and leased to Korean Air Lines with the registration HL7442.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The aircraft flying as Korean Air Lines Flight 007 departed from Gate 15 of John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City, on August 31, 1983, at 00:25 EDT (04:25 UTC), bound for Gimpo International Airport in Gangseo District, Seoul, 35 minutes behind its scheduled departure time of 23:50 EDT, August 30 (03:50 UTC, August 31). The flight was carrying 246 passengers and 23 crew members. After refueling at Anchorage International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, the aircraft departed for Seoul at 04:00 AHDT (13:00 UTC) on August 31, 1983. This leg of the journey was piloted by Captain Chun Byung-in (45), First Officer Son Dong-hui (47), and Flight Engineer Kim Eui-dong (31).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The aircrew had an unusually high ratio of crew to passengers, as six deadheading crew were on board. Twelve passengers occupied the upper deck first class, while in business class almost all of the 24 seats were taken; in economy class, approximately 80 seats were empty. There were 22 children under the age of 12 years aboard. 130 passengers planned to connect to other destinations such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Taipei. United States Congressman Larry McDonald from Georgia, who at the time was also the second president of the conservative John Birch Society, was on the flight.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: After taking off from Anchorage, the flight was instructed by air traffic control (ATC) to turn to a heading of 220 degrees. Approximately 90 seconds later, ATC directed the flight to "proceed direct Bethel when able". Upon arriving over Bethel, Alaska, KAL 007 entered the northernmost of five wide airways, known as the NOPAC (North Pacific) routes, that bridge the Alaskan and Japanese coasts. KAL 007's particular airway, R-20 ("Romeo Two Zero"), passed just from what was then Soviet airspace off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The autopilot system of the 747-200 has four basic control modes: HEADING, VOR/LOC, ILS, and INS. The HEADING mode maintained a constant magnetic course selected by the pilot. The VOR/LOC mode maintained the plane on a specific course, transmitted from a VOR (VHF omnidirectional range, a type of short-range radio signal transmitted from ground beacons) or Localizer (LOC) beacon selected by the pilot. The ILS (instrument landing system) mode caused the plane to track both vertical and lateral course beacons, which led to a specific runway selected by the pilot. The INS (inertial navigation system) mode maintained the plane on lateral course lines between selected flight plan waypoints programmed into the INS computer.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: When the INS navigation systems were properly programmed with the filed flight plan waypoints, the pilot could turn the autopilot mode selector switch to the INS position and the plane would then automatically track the programmed INS course line, provided the plane was headed in the proper direction and within of that course line. If, however, the plane was more than from the flight-planned course line when the pilot turned the autopilot mode selector from HEADING to INS, the plane would continue to track the heading selected in HEADING mode as long as the actual position of the plane was more than from the programmed INS course line. The autopilot computer software commanded the INS mode to remain in the "armed" condition until the plane had moved to a position less than from the desired course line. Once that happened, the INS mode would change from "armed" to "capture" and the plane would track the flight-planned course from then on.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The HEADING mode of the autopilot would normally be engaged sometime after takeoff in order to follow vectors from ATC, and then after receiving appropriate ATC clearance, to guide the plane to intercept the desired INS course line.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The Anchorage VOR beacon was not operational at the time, as it was undergoing maintenance. The crew received a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) of this fact, which was not seen as a problem, as the captain could still check his position at the next VORTAC beacon at Bethel, away. The aircraft was required to maintain the assigned heading of 220 degrees until it could receive the signals from Bethel, then it could fly direct to Bethel, as instructed by ATC, by centering the VOR "to" course deviation indicator (CDI) and then engaging the autopilot in the VOR/LOC mode. Then, when over the Bethel beacon, the flight could start using INS mode to follow the waypoints that makeup route "Romeo-20" around the coast of the U.S.S.R. to Seoul. The INS mode was necessary for this route since after Bethel the plane would be mostly out of range from VOR stations.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At about 10 minutes after take-off, flying on a heading of 245 degrees, KAL 007 began to deviate to the right (north) of its assigned route to Bethel and continued to fly on this constant heading for the next five and a half hours.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) simulation and analysis of the flight data recorder determined that this deviation was probably caused by the aircraft's autopilot system operating in HEADING mode, after the point that it should have been switched to the INS mode. According to the ICAO, the autopilot was not operating in the INS mode either because the crew did not switch the autopilot to the INS mode (as they should have shortly after Cairn Mountain), or they did select the INS mode, but the computer did not transition from "armed" to "capture" condition because the aircraft had already deviated off track by more than the tolerance permitted by the inertial navigation computer. Whatever the reason, the autopilot remained in HEADING mode, and the problem was not detected by the crew.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At 28 minutes after take-off, civilian radar at Kenai Peninsula on the eastern shore of Cook Inlet and with radar coverage west of Anchorage, tracked KAL 007 north of where it should have been.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: When KAL 007 did not reach Bethel 50 minutes after take-off, military radar at King Salmon, Alaska, tracked KAL 007 at north of where it should have been. There is no evidence to indicate that civil air traffic controllers or military radar personnel at Elmendorf Air Force Base (who were in a position to receive the King Salmon radar output) were aware of KAL 007's deviation in real-time, and therefore able to warn the aircraft. It had exceeded its expected maximum deviation sixfold, of error being the maximum expected to drift from the course if the inertial navigation system was activated.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: KAL 007's divergence prevented the aircraft from transmitting its position via shorter range very high frequency radio (VHF). It, therefore, requested KAL 015, also en route to Seoul, to relay reports to air traffic control on its behalf. KAL 007 requested KAL 015 to relay its position three times. At 14:43 UTC, KAL 007 directly transmitted a change of estimated time of arrival for its next waypoint, NEEVA, to the international flight service station at Anchorage, but it did so over the longer range high frequency radio (HF) rather than VHF. HF transmissions are able to carry a longer distance than VHF, but are vulnerable to electromagnetic interference and static; VHF is clearer with less interference, and is preferred by flight crews. The inability to establish direct radio communications to be able to transmit their position directly did not alert the pilots of KAL 007 of their ever-increasing divergence and was not considered unusual by air traffic controllers. Halfway between Bethel and waypoint NABIE, KAL 007 passed through the southern portion of the North American Aerospace Defense Command buffer zone. This zone is north of "Romeo 20" and off-limits to civilian aircraft.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Sometime after leaving American territorial waters, KAL Flight 007 crossed the International Date Line, where the local date shifted from August 31, 1983, to September 1, 1983.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: KAL 007 continued its journey, ever increasing its deviation— off course at waypoint NABIE, off course at waypoint NUKKS, and off course at waypoint NEEVA—until it reached the Kamchatka Peninsula.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In 1983, Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had escalated to a level not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis because of several factors. These included the United States' Strategic Defense Initiative, its planned deployment of the Pershing II weapon system in Europe in March and April, and FleetEx '83-1, the largest naval exercise held to date in the North Pacific. The military hierarchy of the Soviet Union (particularly the old guard led by Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov and Minister of Defence Dmitry Ustinov) viewed these actions as bellicose and destabilizing; they were deeply suspicious of U.S. President Ronald Reagan's intentions and openly fearful he was planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. These fears culminated in RYAN, the code name for a secret intelligence-gathering program initiated by Andropov to detect a potential nuclear sneak attack which he believed Reagan was plotting.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Aircraft from and repeatedly overflew Soviet military installations in the Kuril Islands during FleetEx '83, resulting in the dismissal or reprimanding of Soviet military officials who had been unable to shoot them down. On the Soviet side, RYAN was expanded. Lastly, there was a heightened alert around the Kamchatka Peninsula at the time KAL 007 was in the vicinity, because of a Soviet missile test at the Kura Missile Test Range that was scheduled for the same day. A United States Air Force Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft flying in the area was monitoring the missile test off the peninsula.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At 15:51 UTC, according to Soviet sources, KAL 007 entered the restricted airspace of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The buffer zone extended from Kamchatka's coast and is known as a flight information region (FIR). The radius of the buffer zone nearest to Soviet territory had the additional designation of prohibited airspace. When KAL 007 was about from the Kamchatka coast, four MiG-23 fighters were scrambled to intercept the Boeing 747.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Significant command and control problems were experienced trying to vector the fast military jets onto the 747 before they ran out of fuel. In addition, the pursuit was made more difficult, according to Soviet Air Force Captain Aleksandr Zuyev, who defected to the West in 1989, because, ten days before, Arctic gales had knocked out the key warning radar on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Furthermore, he stated that local officials responsible for repairing the radar lied to Moscow, falsely reporting that they had successfully fixed the radar. Had this radar been operational, it would have enabled an intercept of the stray airliner roughly two hours earlier with plenty of time for proper identification as a civilian aircraft. Instead, the unidentified jetliner crossed over the Kamchatka Peninsula back into international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk without being intercepted. In his explanation to "60 Minutes", Zuyev stated:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The Commander of the Soviet Far East District Air Defense Forces, General Valery Kamensky, was adamant that KAL 007 was to be destroyed even over neutral waters but only after positive identification showed it not to be a passenger plane. His subordinate, General Anatoly Kornukov, commander of Sokol Air Base and later to become commander of the Russian Air Force, insisted that there was no need to make positive identification as the intruder aircraft had already flown over the Kamchatka Peninsula.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: General Kornukov (to Military District Headquarters-Gen. Kamensky): (5:47) "...simply destroy [it] even if it is over neutral waters? Are the orders to destroy it over neutral waters? Oh, well."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Kornukov: "What civilian? [It] has flown over Kamchatka! It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Units of the Soviet Air Defence Forces that had been tracking the South Korean aircraft for more than an hour while it entered and left Soviet airspace now classified the aircraft as a military target when it re-entered their airspace over Sakhalin. After a protracted ground-controlled interception, the three Su-15 fighters (from nearby Dolinsk-Sokol airbase) and the MiG-23 (from Smirnykh Air Base) managed to make visual contact with the Boeing, but, owing to the black of night, failed to make critical identification of the aircraft which reveal. The pilot of the lead Su-15 fighter fired warning shots with its cannon, but recalled later in 1991, "I fired four bursts, more than 200 rounds. For all the good it did. After all, I was loaded with armor-piercing shells, not incendiary shells. It's doubtful whether anyone could see them."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At this point, KAL 007 contacted Tokyo Area Control Center, requesting clearance to ascend to a higher flight level for reasons of fuel economy; the request was granted, so the Boeing started to climb, gradually slowing as it exchanged speed for altitude. The decrease in speed caused the pursuing fighter to overshoot the Boeing and was interpreted by the Soviet pilot as an evasive maneuver. The order to shoot KAL 007 down was given as it was about to leave Soviet airspace for the second time. At around 18:26 UTC, under pressure from General Kornukov and ground controllers not to let the aircraft escape into international airspace, the lead fighter was able to move back into a position where it could fire two K-8 (NATO reporting name: AA-3 "Anab") air-to-air missiles at the plane.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In a 1991 interview with "Izvestia", Major Gennadiy Osipovich, pilot of the Su-15 interceptor that shot the 747 down, spoke about his recollections of the events leading up to the shoot-down. Contrary to official Soviet statements at the time, he recalled telling ground controllers that there were "blinking lights". He continued, saying of the 747-230B, "I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use." Osipovich stated, "I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane; they did not ask me."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Commenting on the moment that KAL 007 slowed as it ascended from flight level 330 to flight level 350, and then on his maneuvering for a missile launch, Osipovich said:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The Soviet real-time military communication transcripts of the shoot-down suggest the chain of command from the top general to Major Osipovich, the Su-15 interceptor pilot who shot down KAL 007. In reverse order, they are:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At the time of the attack, the plane had been cruising at an altitude of about . Tapes recovered from the airliner's cockpit voice recorder indicate that the crew was unaware that they were off course and violating Soviet airspace. Immediately after missile detonation, the airliner began a 113-second arc upward because of a damaged crossover cable between the left inboard and right outboard elevators.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At 18:26:46 UTC (03:26 Japan Time; 06:26 Sakhalin time), at the apex of the arc at altitude , the autopilot disengaged (this was either done by the pilots, or it disengaged automatically). Now being controlled manually, the plane began to descend to . From 18:27:01 until 18:27:09, the flight crew reported to Tokyo Area Control Center informing that KAL 007 to "descend to 10,000" [feet; 3,000m]. At 18:27:20, ICAO graphing of Digital Flight Data Recorder tapes showed that after a descent phase and a 10-second "nose-up", KAL 007 was leveled out at pre-missile detonation altitude of , forward acceleration was back to pre-missile detonation rate of zero acceleration, and airspeed had returned to pre-detonation velocity.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Yaw oscillations, beginning at the time of missile detonation, continued decreasingly until the end of the 1-minute 44-second section of the tape. The Boeing did not break up, explode, or plummet immediately after the attack; it continued its gradual descent for four minutes, then leveled off at (18:30–18:31 UTC), rather than continuing to descend to as previously reported to Tokyo Area Control Center. It continued at this altitude for almost five more minutes (18:35 UTC).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The last cockpit voice recorder entry occurred at 18:27:46 while in this phase of the descent. At 18:28 UTC, the aircraft was reported turning to the north. ICAO analysis concluded that the flight crew "retained limited control" of the aircraft. However, this only lasted for five minutes. The crew then lost all control. The aircraft began to descend rapidly in spirals over Moneron Island for . The aircraft then broke apart in mid-air and crashed into the ocean, just off the West coast of the Sakhalin Island. All 269 people on board were killed. The aircraft was last seen visually by Osipovich, "somehow descending slowly" over Moneron Island. The aircraft disappeared off long-range military radar at Wakkanai, Japan, at a height of .


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: KAL 007 was probably attacked in international airspace, with a 1993 Russian report listing the location of the missile firing outside its territory at , although the intercepting pilot stated otherwise in a subsequent interview. Initial reports that the airliner had been forced to land on Sakhalin were soon proven false. One of these reports conveyed via phone by Orville Brockman, the Washington office spokesman of the Federal Aviation Administration, to the press secretary of Larry McDonald, was that the FAA in Tokyo had been informed by the Japanese Civil Aviation Bureau that "Japanese self-defense force radar confirms that the Hokkaido radar followed Air Korea to a landing in Soviet territory on the island of Sakhalinska and it is confirmed by the manifest that Congressman McDonald is on board".


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: A Japanese fisherman aboard "58th Chidori Maru" later reported to the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency (this report was cited by ICAO analysis) that he had heard a plane at low altitude, but had not seen it. Then he heard "a loud sound followed by a bright flash of light on the horizon, then another dull sound and a less intense flash of light on the horizon" and smelled aviation fuel.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Though the interceptor pilot reported to ground control, "Target destroyed", the Soviet command, from general on down, indicated surprise and consternation at KAL 007's continued flight, and ability to regain its altitude and maneuver. This consternation continued through to KAL 007's subsequent level flight at altitude , and then, after almost five minutes, through its spiral descent over Moneron Island. (See from 18:26 UTC onwards: "Lt. Col. Novoseletski: Well, what is happening? What is the matter? Who guided him in? He locked on; why didn't he shoot it down?")


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The following damage to the aircraft was determined by the ICAO from its analysis of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: KAL 007 had four redundant hydraulic systems of which systems one, two, and three were damaged or destroyed. There was no evidence of damage to system four. The hydraulics provided actuation of all primary and secondary flight controls (except leading edge slats in the latter) as well as landing gear retraction, extension, gear steering, and wheel braking. Each primary flight control axis received power from all four hydraulic systems. Upon missile detonation, the jumbo jet began to experience oscillations (yawing) as the dual channel yaw damper was damaged. Yawing would not have occurred if hydraulic systems one or two were fully operational. The result is that the control column did not thrust forward upon impact (it should have done so as the plane was on autopilot) to bring down the plane to its former altitude of . This failure of the autopilot to correct the rise in altitude indicates that hydraulic system number three, which operates the autopilot actuator, a system controlling the plane's elevators, was damaged or out. KAL 007's airspeed and acceleration rate both began to decrease as the plane began to climb. At twenty seconds after the missile detonation, a click was heard in the cabin, which is identified as the "automatic pilot disconnect warning" sound. Either the pilot or co-pilot had disconnected the autopilot and was manually thrusting the control column forward in order to bring the plane lower. Though the autopilot had been turned off, manual mode did not begin functioning for another twenty seconds. This failure of the manual system to engage upon command indicates failure in hydraulic systems one and two. With wing flaps up, "control was reduced to the right inboard aileron and the innermost of spoiler section of each side".


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Contrary to Major Osipovich's statement in 1991 that he had taken off half of KAL 007's left wing, ICAO analysis found that the wing was intact: "The interceptor pilot stated that the first missile hit near the tail, while the second missile took off half the left wing of the aircraft... The interceptor's pilot's statement that the second missile took off half of the left wing was probably incorrect. The missiles were fired at a two-second interval and would have detonated at an equal interval. The first detonated at 18:26:02 UTC. The last radio transmissions from KE007 to Tokyo Radio were between 18:26:57 and 18:27:15 UTC using HF [high frequency]. The HF 1 radio aerial of the aircraft was positioned in the left wing tip suggesting that the left wing tip was intact at this time. Also, the aircraft's maneuvers after the attack did not indicate extensive damage to the left wing."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The co-pilot reported to Captain Chun twice during the flight after the missiles' detonation, "Engines normal, sir."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The first missile was radar-controlled and proximity fuzed, and detonated behind the aircraft. Sending fragments forward, it either severed or unraveled the crossover cable from the left inboard elevator to the right elevator. This, with damage to one of the four hydraulic systems, caused KAL 007 to ascend from , at which point the autopilot was disengaged.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Fragments from the proximity fuzed air-to-air missile that detonated behind the aircraft, punctured the fuselage and caused rapid decompression of the pressurised cabin. The interval of 11 seconds between the sound of missile detonation picked up by the cockpit voice recorder and the sound of the alarm sounding in the cockpit enabled ICAO analysts to determine that the size of the ruptures to the pressurised fuselage was .


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: As a result of Cold War tensions, the search and rescue operations of the Soviet Union were not coordinated with those of the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Consequently, no information was shared, and each side endeavored to harass or obtain evidence to implicate the other. The flight data recorders were the key pieces of evidence sought by both governments, with the United States insisting that an independent observer from the ICAO be present on one of its search vessels in the event that they were found. International boundaries are not well defined on the open sea, leading to numerous confrontations between the large number of opposing naval ships that were assembled in the area.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The Soviets did not acknowledge shooting down the aircraft until September 6, five days after the flight was shot down. Eight days after the shoot-down, Marshal of the Soviet Union and Chief of General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov denied knowledge of where KAL 007 had gone down; "We could not give the precise answer about the spot where it [KAL 007] fell because we ourselves did not know the spot in the first place."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Nine years later, the Russian Federation handed over transcripts of Soviet military communications that showed that at least two documented search and rescue (SAR) missions were ordered within a half-hour of the attack, to the last Soviet verified location of the descending jumbo jet over Moneron Island. The first search was ordered from Smirnykh Air Base in central Sakhalin at 18:47 UTC, nine minutes after KAL 007 had disappeared from Soviet radar screens and brought rescue helicopters from Khomutovo Air Base (the military unit at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport in southern Sakhalin), and Soviet Border Troops boats to the area.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The second search was ordered eight minutes later by the Deputy Commander of the Far Eastern Military District, General Strogov, and involved civilian trawlers that were in the area around Moneron. "The border guards. What ships do we now have near Moneron Island? If they are civilians, send [them] there immediately." Moneron is just long and wide, located due west of Sakhalin Island at ; it is the only land mass in the whole Tatar Straits.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Immediately after the shoot-down, South Korea, the owner of the aircraft and therefore prime considerant for jurisdiction, designated the United States and Japan as search and salvage agents, thereby making it illegal for the Soviet Union to salvage the aircraft, providing it was found outside Soviet territorial waters. If it did so, the United States would now be legally entitled to use force against the Soviets, if necessary, to prevent retrieval of any part of the plane.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On the same day as the shoot-down, Rear Admiral William A. Cockell, Commander, Task Force 71, and a skeleton staff, taken by helicopter from Japan, embarked in (stationed off Vladivostok at time of the flight) on September 9 for further transfer to the destroyer to assume duties as Officer in Tactical Command (OTC) of the Search and Rescue (SAR) effort. A surface search began immediately and on into September 13. U.S. underwater operations began on September 14. On September 10, 1983, with no further hope of finding survivors, Task Force 71's mission was reclassified from a "Search and Rescue" (SAR) operation to a "Search and Salvage" (SAS).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On October 17, Rear Admiral Walter T. Piotti, Jr. took command of the task force and its search and salvage mission from Rear Admiral Cockell. First to be searched was a "high probability" area. This was unsuccessful. On October 21, Task Force 71 extended its search within coordinates encompassing, in an arc around the Soviet territorial boundaries north of Moneron Island, an area of , reaching to the west of Sakhalin Island. This was the "large probability" area. The search areas were outside the Soviet-claimed territorial boundaries. The northwesternmost point of the search touched the Soviet territorial boundary closest to the naval port of Nevelsk on Sakhalin. Nevelsk was from Moneron. This larger search was also unsuccessful.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The vessels used in the search, for the Soviet side as well as the US side (US, South Korea, Japan) were both civilian trawlers, specially equipped for both the SAR and SAS operations, and various types of warships and support ships. The Soviet side also employed both civilian and military divers. The Soviet search, beginning on the day of the shoot-down and continuing until November 6, was confined to the "high probability" area in international waters, and within Soviet territorial waters to the north of Moneron Island. The area within Soviet territorial waters was off-limits to the U.S., South Korean, and Japanese boats. From September 3 to 29, four ships from South Korea joined in the search.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Piotti Jr, commander of Task Force 71 of the 7th Fleet would summarize the US and Allied, and then the Soviets', Search and Salvage operations:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: These missions met with interference by the Soviets, in violation of the 1972 Incident at Sea agreement, and included false flag and fake light signals, sending an armed boarding party to threaten to board a U.S.-chartered Japanese auxiliary vessel (blocked by U.S. warship interposition), interfering with a helicopter coming off the USS "Elliot" (Sept. 7), attempted ramming of rigs used by the South Koreans in their quadrant search, hazardous maneuvering of "Gavril Sarychev" and near-collision with the (September 15, 18), removing U.S. sonars, setting false pingers in deep international waters, sending Backfire bombers armed with air-to-surface nuclear-armed missiles to threaten U.S. naval units, criss-crossing in front of U.S. combatant vessels (October 26), cutting and attempted cutting of moorings of Japanese auxiliary vessels, particularly "Kaiko Maru III", and radar lock-ons by a Soviet , "Petropavlovsk", and a , "Odarennyy", targeting U.S. naval ships and the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Douglas Munro (WHEC-724), , escorting , experienced all of the above interference and was involved in a near-collision with "Odarennyy" (September 23–27).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: According to the ICAO: "The location of the main wreckage was not determined... the approximate position was , which was in international waters." This point is about from Moneron Island, about from the shore of Sakhalin and from the point of attack.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Piotti Jr, commander of Task Force 71 of 7th Fleet, believed the search for KAL 007 in international waters to have been a search in the wrong place and assessed:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Had TF [task force] 71 been permitted to search without restriction imposed by claimed territorial waters, the aircraft stood a good chance of having been found. No wreckage of KAL 007 was found. However, the operation established, with a 95% or above confidence level, that the wreckage, or any significant portion of the aircraft, does not lie within the probability area outside the 12 nautical mile area claimed by the Soviets as their territorial limit.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: At a hearing of the ICAO on September 15, 1983, J. Lynn Helms, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, stated: "The USSR has refused to permit search and rescue units from other countries to enter Soviet territorial waters to search for the remains of KAL 007. Moreover, the Soviet Union has blocked access to the likely crash site and has refused to cooperate with other interested parties, to ensure prompt recovery of all technical equipment, wreckage, and other material."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: No body parts were recovered by the Soviet search team from the surface of the sea in their territorial waters, though they would later turn over clothes and shoes to a joint U.S.–Japanese delegation at Nevelsk on Sakhalin. On Monday, September 26, 1983, a delegation of seven Japanese and U.S. officials arriving aboard the Japanese patrol boat "Tsugaru", had met a six-man Soviet delegation at the port of Nevelsk on Sakhalin Island. KGB Major General A. I. Romanenko, the Commander of the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands frontier guard, headed the Soviet delegation. Romanenko handed over to the U.S. and the Japanese, among other things, single and paired footwear. With footwear that the Japanese also retrieved, the total came to 213 men's, women's, and children's dress shoes, sandals, and sports shoes. The Soviets indicated these items were all that they had retrieved floating or on the shores of Sakhalin and Moneron islands.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Family members of KAL 007 passengers later stated that these shoes were worn by their loved ones for the flight. Sonia Munder had no difficulty recognizing the sneakers of her children, one from Christian, age 14, and one from Lisi, age 17, by the intricate way her children laced them. Another mother says, "I recognized them just like that. You see, there are all kinds of inconspicuous marks that strangers do not notice. This is how I recognized them. My daughter loved to wear them."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Another mother, Nan Oldham, identified her son John's sneakers from a photo in "Life" magazine of 55 of the 213 shoes—apparently a random array on display those first days at Chitose Air Force Base in Japan. "We saw photos of his shoes in a magazine," says Oldham, "We followed up through KAL and a few weeks later, a package arrived. His shoes were inside: size 11 sneakers with cream white paint." John Oldham had taken his seat in row 31 of KAL 007 wearing those cream white paint-spattered sneakers.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Nothing was found by the joint U.S.–Japanese–South Korean search and rescue/salvage operations in international waters at the designated crash site or within the search area.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Eight days after the shoot-down, human remains and other types of objects appeared on the north shore of Hokkaido, Japan. Hokkaido is about below the southern tip of Sakhalin across the La Pérouse Strait (the southern tip of Sakhalin is from Moneron Island which is west of Sakhalin). The ICAO concluded that these bodies, body parts, and objects were carried from Soviet waters to the shores of Hokkaido by the southerly current west of Sakhalin Island. All currents of the Strait of Tartary relevant to Moneron Island flow to the north, except this southerly current between Moneron Island and Sakhalin Island.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: These human remains, including body parts, tissues, and two partial torsos, totaled 13. All were unidentifiable, but one partial torso was that of a Caucasian woman as indicated by auburn hair on a partial skull, and one partial body was of an Asian child (with glass embedded). There was no luggage recovered. Of the non-human remains that the Japanese recovered were various items including dentures, newspapers, seats, books, eight KAL paper cups, shoes, sandals, and sneakers, a camera case, a "please fasten seat belt" sign, an oxygen mask, a handbag, a bottle of dishwashing fluid, several blouses, an identity card belonging to 25-year-old passenger Mary Jane Hendrie of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, and the business cards of passengers Kathy Brown-Spier and Mason Chang. These items generally came from the passenger cabin of the aircraft. None of the items found generally came from the cargo hold of the plane, such as suitcases, packing boxes, industrial machinery, instruments, and sports equipment.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian newspaper "Izvestia" published a series of interviews with Soviet military personnel who had been involved in salvage operations to find and recover parts of the aircraft. After three days of searching using trawlers, side-scan sonar, and diving bells, Soviet searchers located the aircraft wreckage at a depth of near Moneron Island. Since no human remains or luggage were found on the surface in the impact area, the divers expected to find the remains of passengers who had been trapped in the submerged wreckage of the aircraft on the seabed. When they visited the site two weeks after the shoot-down, they found that the wreckage was in small pieces, and found no bodies:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: I had the idea that it would be intact. Well, perhaps a little banged up... The divers would go inside the aircraft and see everything there was to see. In fact, it was completely demolished, scattered about like kindling. The largest things we saw were the braces which are especially strong—they were about one and a half or two meters long and 50–60 centimeters wide. As for the rest—broken into tiny pieces...


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: According to "Izvestia", the divers had only ten encounters with passenger remains (tissues and body parts) in the debris area, including one partial torso.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: "Tinro ll" submersible Captain Mikhail Igorevich Girs' diary: Submergence 10 October. Aircraft pieces, wing spars, pieces of aircraft skin, wiring, and clothing. But—no people. The impression is that all of this has been dragged here by a trawl rather than falling down from the sky...


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Vyacheslav Popov: "I will confess that we felt great relief when we found out that there were no bodies at the bottom. Not only were no bodies; there were also no suitcases or large bags. I did not miss a single dive. I have quite a clear impression: The aircraft was filled with garbage, but there were really no people there. Why? Usually when an aircraft crashes, even a small one... As a rule, there are suitcases and bags, or at least the handles of the suitcases."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: A number of civilian divers, whose first dive was on September 15, two weeks after the shoot-down, state that Soviet military divers and trawls had been at work before them:


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Diver Vyacheslav Popov: "As we learned then, before us the trawlers had done some 'work' in the designated quadrant. It is hard to understand what sense the military saw in the trawling operation. First, drag everything haphazardly around the bottom by the trawls, and then send in the submersibles?...It is clear that things should have been done in the reverse order."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: ICAO also interviewed a number of these divers for its 1993 report: "In addition to the scraps of metal, they observed personal items, such as clothing, documents, and wallets. Although some evidence of human remains was noticed by the divers, they found no bodies."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: General Secretary Yuri Andropov, on the advice of Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov, but against the advice of the Foreign Ministry, initially decided not to make any admission of downing the airliner, on the premise that no one would find out or be able to prove otherwise. Consequently the TASS news agency reported twelve hours after the shoot-down only that an unidentified aircraft, flying without lights, had been intercepted by Soviet fighters after it violated Soviet airspace over Sakhalin. The aircraft had allegedly failed to respond to warnings and "continued its flight toward the Sea of Japan". Some commentators believe that the inept manner in which the political events were handled by the Soviet government was affected by the failing health of Andropov, who was permanently hospitalised in late September or early October 1983 (Andropov died the following February).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In a 2015 interview Igor Kirillov, the senior Soviet news anchor said that he was initially given a printed TASS report to announce over the news on September 1, which included an "open and honest" admission that the plane was shot down by mistake (a wrong judgment call by the Far Eastern Air Defence Command). However, at the moment the opening credits of the "Vremya" evening news programme rolled in, an editor ran in and snatched the sheet of paper from his hand, handing him another TASS report which was "completely opposite" to the first one and to the truth.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The shoot-down happened at a very tense time in the U.S.–Soviet relations during the Cold War. The U.S. adopted a strategy of releasing a substantial amount of hitherto highly classified intelligence information in order to exploit a major propaganda advantage over the Soviet Union.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Six hours after the plane was downed, the South Korean government issued an announcement that the plane had merely been forced to land abruptly by the Soviets and that all passengers and crew were safe. U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz held a press conference about the incident at 10:45 on September 1, during which he divulged some details of intercepted Soviet communications and denounced the actions of the Soviet Union.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On September 5, 1983, President Reagan condemned the shooting down of the airplane as the "Korean airline massacre", a "crime against humanity [that] must never be forgotten" and an "act of barbarism... [and] inhuman brutality". The following day, the U.S. ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick delivered an audio-visual presentation in the United Nations Security Council, using audio tapes of the Soviet pilots' radio conversations and a map of Flight 007's path in depicting its shooting down. Following this presentation, TASS acknowledged for the first time that the aircraft had indeed been shot down after warnings were ignored. The Soviets challenged many of the facts presented by the U.S. and revealed the previously unknown presence of a USAF RC-135 surveillance aircraft whose path had crossed that of KAL 007.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On September 7, Japan and the United States jointly released a transcript of Soviet communications, intercepted by the listening post at Wakkanai, to an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council. Reagan issued a National Security Directive stating that the Soviets were not to be let off the hook, and initiating "a major diplomatic effort to keep international and domestic attention focused on the Soviet action". The move was seen by the Soviet leadership as confirmation of the West's bad intentions.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: A high-level U.S.–Soviet summit, the first in nearly a year, was scheduled for September 8, 1983, in Madrid. The Shultz–Gromyko meeting went ahead but was overshadowed by the KAL 007 events. It ended acrimoniously, with Shultz stating: "Foreign Minister Gromyko's response to me today was even more unsatisfactory than the response he gave in public yesterday. I find it totally unacceptable." Reagan ordered the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on September 15, 1983, to revoke the license of Aeroflot Soviet Airlines to operate flights to and from the United States. Aeroflot flights to North America were consequently available only through Canadian and Mexican cities, forcing the Soviet foreign minister to cancel his scheduled trip to the UN. Aeroflot service to the U.S. was not restored until April 29, 1986.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: An emergency session of the ICAO was held in Montreal, Canada. On September 12, 1983, the Soviet Union used its veto to block a United Nations resolution condemning it for shooting down the aircraft.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Shortly after the Soviet Union shot down KAL 007, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, operating the commercial airports around New York City, denied Soviet aircraft landing rights, in violation of the United Nations Charter that required the host nation to allow all member countries access to the UN. In reaction, TASS and some at the UN raised the question of whether the UN should move its headquarters from the United States. Charles Lichenstein, acting U.S. permanent representative to the UN under Ambassador Kirkpatrick, responded, "We will put no impediment in your way. The members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset." Administration officials were quick to announce that Lichenstein was speaking only for himself.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In the Cold War context of Operation RYAN, the Strategic Defence Initiative, Pershing II missile deployment in Europe, and the upcoming Exercise Able Archer, the Soviet Government perceived the incident with the South Korean airliner to be a portent of war. The Soviet hierarchy took the official line that KAL Flight 007 was on a spy mission, as it "flew deep into Soviet territory for several hundred kilometres [miles], without responding to signals and disobeying the orders of interceptor fighter planes". They claimed its purpose was to probe the air defences of highly sensitive Soviet military sites in the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island. The Soviet government expressed regret over the loss of life, but offered no apology and did not respond to demands for compensation. Instead, the Soviet Union blamed the CIA for this "criminal, provocative act".


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In a comparative study of the two tragedies published in 1991, political scientist Robert Entman points out that with KAL 007, "the angle taken by the US media emphasised the moral bankruptcy and guilt of the perpetrating nation. With Iran Air 655, the frame de-emphasised guilt and focused on the complex problems of operating military high technology".


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Since the aircraft had departed from U.S. soil and U.S. nationals had died in the incident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was legally required to investigate. On the morning of September 1, the NTSB chief in Alaska, James Michelangelo, received an order from the NTSB in Washington at the behest of the State Department requiring all documents relating to the NTSB investigation to be sent to Washington and notifying him that the State Department would now conduct the investigation.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The U.S. State Department, after closing the NTSB investigation on the grounds that it was not an accident, pursued an ICAO investigation instead. Commentators such as Johnson point out that this action was illegal, and that in deferring the investigation to the ICAO, the Reagan administration effectively precluded any politically or militarily sensitive information from being subpoenaed that might have embarrassed the administration or contradicted its version of events. Unlike the NTSB, ICAO can subpoena neither persons nor documents and is dependent on the governments involved—in this incident, the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and South Korea—to supply evidence voluntarily.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) had only one experience of investigation of an air disaster before the KAL 007 shoot-down. This was the incident of February 21, 1973, when Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by Israeli F-4 jets over the Sinai Peninsula. ICAO convention required the state in whose territory the incident had taken place (the Soviet Union) to conduct an investigation together with the country of registration (South Korea), the country whose air traffic control the aircraft was flying under (Japan), as well as the country of the aircraft's manufacturer (US).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The ICAO investigation, led by Caj Frostell, did not have the authority to compel the states involved to hand over evidence, instead having to rely on what they voluntarily submitted. Consequently, the investigation did not have access to sensitive evidence such as radar data, intercepts, ATC tapes, or the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) (whose discovery the U.S.S.R. had kept secret). A number of simulations were conducted with the assistance of Boeing and Litton (the manufacturer of the navigation system).


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The ICAO released their report on December 2, 1983, which concluded that the violation of Soviet airspace was accidental: One of two explanations for the aircraft's deviation was that the autopilot had remained in hold instead of mode after departing Anchorage. They postulated that this inflight navigational error was caused by either the crew's failure to select mode or the inertial navigation not activating when selected because the aircraft was already too far off track. It was determined that the crew did not notice this error or subsequently perform navigational checks, which would have revealed that the aircraft was diverging further and further from its assigned route. This was later deemed to be caused by a "lack of situational awareness and flight deck coordination".


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The report included a statement by the Soviet Government claiming "no remains of the victims, the instruments or their components or the flight recorders have so far been discovered". This statement was subsequently shown to be untrue by Boris Yeltsin's release in 1993 of a November 1983 memo from KGB head Viktor Chebrikov and Defence Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to Yuri Andropov. This memo stated, "In the third decade of October this year the equipment in question (the recorder of in-flight parameters and the recorder of voice communications by the flight crew with ground air traffic surveillance stations and between themselves) was brought aboard a search vessel and forwarded to Moscow by air for decoding and translation at the Air Force Scientific Research Institute." The Soviet Government statement would further be contradicted by Soviet civilian divers who later recalled that they viewed the wreckage of the aircraft on the bottom of the sea for the first time on September 15, two weeks after the plane had been shot down.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Following the publication of the report, the ICAO adopted a resolution condemning the Soviet Union for the attack. Furthermore, the report led to a unanimous amendment in May 1984—though not coming into force until October 1, 1998—to the Convention on International Civil Aviation that defined the use of force against civilian airliners in more detail. The amendment to section 3(d) reads in part: "The contracting States recognize that every State must refrain from resorting to the use of weapons against civil aircraft in flight and that, in case of interception, the lives of persons on board and the safety of aircraft must not be endangered."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: It is customary for the Air Force to impound radar trackings involving possible litigation in cases of aviation accidents. In the civil litigation for damages, the United States Department of Justice explained that the tapes from the Air Force radar installation at King Salmon, Alaska, pertinent to KAL 007's flight in the Bethel area had been destroyed and could therefore not be supplied to the plaintiffs. At first Justice Department lawyer Jan Van Flatern stated that they were destroyed 15 days after the shoot-down. Later, he said he had "misspoken" and changed the time of destruction to 30 hours after the event. A Pentagon spokesman concurred, saying that the tapes are recycled for re-use from 24–30 hours afterward; the fate of KAL 007 was known inside this timeframe.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Hans Ephraimson-Abt, whose daughter Alice Ephraimson-Abt had died on the flight, chaired the "American Association for Families of KAL 007 Victims". He single-handedly pursued three U.S. administrations for answers about the flight, flying to Washington 250 times and meeting with 149 State Department officials. Following the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Ephraimson-Abt persuaded U.S. Senators Ted Kennedy, Sam Nunn, Carl Levin, and Bill Bradley to write to the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev requesting information about the flight.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: "Glasnost" reforms in the same year brought about a relaxation of press censorship; consequently reports started to appear in the Soviet press suggesting that the Soviet military knew the location of the wreckage and had possession of the flight data recorders. On December 10, 1991, Senator Jesse Helms of the Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Boris Yeltsin requesting information concerning the survival of passengers and crew of KAL 007 including the fate of Congressman Larry McDonald.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On June 17, 1992, President Yeltsin revealed that after the 1991 failed coup attempt concerted attempts were made to locate Soviet-era documents relating to KAL 007. He mentioned the discovery of "a memorandum from K.G.B. to the Central Committee of the Communist Party," stating that a tragedy had taken place and adding that there are documents "which would clarify the entire picture." Yeltsin said the memo continued to say that "these documents are so well concealed that it is doubtful that our children will be able to find them." On September 11, 1992, Yeltsin officially acknowledged the existence of the recorders and promised to give the South Korean government a transcript of the flight recorder contents as found in KGB files.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In October 1992, Hans Ephraimson-Abt led a delegation of families and U.S. State Department officials to Moscow at the invitation of President Yeltsin. During a state ceremony at St. Catherine's Hall in the Kremlin, the KAL family delegation was handed a portfolio containing partial transcripts of the KAL 007 cockpit voice recorder, translated into Russian, and documents of the Politburo pertaining to the tragedy.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In November 1992, President Yeltsin handed the two recorder containers to Korean President Roh Tae-Woo, but not the tapes themselves. The following month, the ICAO voted to reopen the KAL 007 investigations in order to take the newly released information into account. The tapes were handed to ICAO in Paris on January 8, 1993. Also handed over at the same time were tapes of the ground-to-air communications of the Soviet military. The tapes were transcribed by the Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) in Paris in the presence of representatives from Japan, The Russian Federation, South Korea, and the United States.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: A 1993 official enquiry by the Russian Federation absolved the Soviet hierarchy of blame, determining that the incident was a case of mistaken identity. On May 28, 1993, the ICAO presented its second report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin disclosed five top-secret memos dating from a few weeks after the downing of KAL 007 in 1983. The memos contained Soviet communications (from KGB Chief Viktor Chebrikov and Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to General Secretary Yury Andropov) that indicated that they knew the location of KAL 007's wreckage while they were simulating a search and harassing the American Navy; they had found the sought-after cockpit voice recorder on October 20, 1983 (50 days after the incident), and had decided to keep this knowledge secret, the reason being that the tapes could not unequivocally support their firmly held view that KAL 007's flight to Soviet territory was a deliberately planned intelligence mission.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The third memo acknowledges that analysis of the recorder tapes showed no evidence of the Soviet interceptor attempting to contact KAL 007 via radio nor any indication that the KAL 007 had been given warning shots.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: However in case the flight recorders shall become available to the western countries their data may be used for Confirmation of no attempt by the intercepting aircraft to establish radio contact with the intruder plane on 121.5 MHz and no tracers warning shots in the last section of the flight


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: That the Soviet search was simulated (while knowing the wreckage lay elsewhere) also is suggested by the article of Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archives of Recent History, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the airplane's shoot-down. Commenting on the Soviet and American searches: "Since the U.S.S.R., for natural reasons, knew better where the Boeing had been downed...it was very problematical to retrieve anything, especially as the U.S.S.R. was not particularly interested".


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On November 18, 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, in a goodwill gesture to South Korea during a visit to Seoul to ratify a new treaty, released both the flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) of KAL 007. Initial South Korean research showed the FDR to be empty and the CVR to have an unintelligible copy. The Russians then released the recordings to the ICAO Secretary General. The ICAO report continued to support the initial assertion that KAL 007 accidentally flew in Soviet airspace, after listening to the flight crew's conversations recorded by the CVR, and confirming that either the aircraft had flown on a constant magnetic heading instead of activating the INS and following its assigned waypoints, or, if it had activated the INS, it had been activated when the aircraft had already deviated beyond the 7-nautical mile Desired Track Envelope within which the waypoints would have been captured.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In addition, the Russian Federation released "Transcript of Communications. U.S.S.R. Air Defence Command Centres on Sakhalin Island" transcripts to ICAO—this new evidence triggered the revised ICAO report in 1993 "The Report of the Completion of the Fact-Finding Investigation", and is appended to it. These transcripts (of two reels of tape, each containing multiple tracks) are time specified, some to the second, of the communications between the various command posts and other military facilities on Sakhalin from the time of the initial orders for the shoot-down and then through the stalking of KAL 007 by Major Osipovich in his Su-15 interceptor, the attack as seen and commented on by General Kornukov, Commander of Sokol Air Base, down the ranks to the Combat Controller Captain Titovnin.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The transcripts include the post-attack flight of KAL 007 until it had reached Moneron Island, the descent of KAL 007 over Moneron, the initial Soviet SAR missions to Moneron, the futile search of the support interceptors for KAL 007 on the water, and ending with the debriefing of Osipovich on return to base. Some of the communications are the telephone conversations between superior officers and subordinates and involve commands to them, while other communications involve the recorded responses to what was then being viewed on radar tracking KAL 007. These multi-track communications from various command posts telecommunicating at the same minute and seconds as other command posts were communicating provide a "composite" picture of what was taking place.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The data from the CVR and the FDR revealed that the recordings broke off after the first minute and 44 seconds of KAL 007's post-missile detonation 12 minute flight. The remaining minutes of the flight would be supplied by the Russia 1992 submission to ICAO of the real-time Soviet military communication of the shoot-down and aftermath. The fact that both recorder tapes stopped exactly at the same time 1 minute and 44 seconds after missile detonation (18:38:02 UTC) without the tape portions for the more than 10 minutes of KAL 007's post-detonation flight before it descended below radar tracking (18:38 UTC) finds no explanation in the ICAO analysis: "It could not be established why both flight recorders simultaneously ceased to operate 104 seconds after the attack. The power supply cables were fed to the rear of the aircraft in raceways on opposite sides of the fuselage until they came together behind the two recorders."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Passenger pain and suffering was an important factor in determining the level of compensation that was paid by Korean Air Lines.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Fragments from the proximity fused R-98 medium range air-to-air missile exploding behind the tail caused punctures to the pressurized passenger cabin. When one of the flight crew radioed Tokyo Area Control one minute and two seconds after missile detonation his breathing was already "accentuated", indicating to ICAO analysts that he was speaking through the microphone located in his oxygen mask, "Korean Air 007 ah... We are... Rapid compressions. Descend to 10,000."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Two expert witnesses testified at a trial before then Magistrate Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. They addressed the issue of pre-death pain and suffering. Captain James McIntyre, an experienced Boeing 747 pilot, and aircraft accident investigator, testified that shrapnel from the missile caused rapid decompression of the cabin, but left the passengers sufficient time to don oxygen masks: "McIntyre testified that, based upon his estimate of the extent of damage the aircraft sustained, all passengers survived the initial impact of the shrapnel from the missile explosion. In McIntyre's expert opinion, at least 12 minutes elapsed between the impact of the shrapnel and the crash of the plane, and the passengers remained conscious throughout."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Flight 007 has been the subject of ongoing controversy and has spawned a number of conspiracy theories. Many of these are based on the suppression of evidence such as the flight data recorders, unexplained details such as the role of a USAF RC-135 surveillance aircraft, the untimely destruction of the U.S. Air Force's King Salmon radar data, Cold War disinformation and propaganda and Gennadiy Osipovich's (the Soviet fighter pilot who shot down flight 007) statement that although he knew the plane was a civilian aircraft, he suspected that it could have been being used as a spy plane.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Two television movies were produced about the incident; both films were produced before the fall of the Soviet Union allowed access to archives. "Shootdown" (1988), a telemovie starring Angela Lansbury, John Cullum, and Kyle Secor, was based on the book of the same title by R.W. Johnson, about the efforts of Nan Moore (Lansbury), the mother of a passenger, to get answers from the U.S. and Soviet governments. Then the British Granada Television documentary drama "Coded Hostile", screened on ITV on September 7, 1989, detailed the U.S. military and governmental investigation, highlighting the likely confusion of Flight 007 with the USAF RC-135 in the context of routine US SIGINT/COMINT missions in the area. Written by Brian Phelan and directed by David Darlow, it starred Michael Murphy, Michael Moriarty, and Chris Sarandon. An updated version was screened by Channel 4 in the UK on August 31, 1993, incorporating details of the 1992 UN investigation.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The FAA temporarily closed Airway R-20, the air corridor that Korean Air Flight 007 was meant to follow, on September 2. Airlines fiercely resisted the closure of this popular route, the shortest of five corridors between Alaska and Eastern Asia. It was therefore reopened on October 2 after safety and navigational aids were checked.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: NATO had decided, under the impetus of the Reagan administration, to deploy Pershing II and Gryphon cruise missiles in West Germany. This deployment would have placed missiles just 6–10 minutes striking distance from Moscow. Support for the deployment was wavering and it looked doubtful that it would be carried out. When the Soviet Union shot down Flight 007, the U.S. was able to galvanize enough support at home and abroad to enable the deployment to go ahead.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The unprecedented disclosure of the communications intercepted by the United States and Japan revealed a considerable amount of information about their intelligence systems and capabilities. National Security Agency director Lincoln D. Faurer commented: "...as a result of the Korean Air Lines affair, you have already heard more about my business in the past two weeks than I would desire... For the most part, this has not been a matter of unwelcome leaks. It is the result of a conscious, responsible decision to address an otherwise unbelievable horror." Changes that the Soviets subsequently made to their codes and frequencies reduced the effectiveness of this monitoring by 60%.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The U.S. KAL 007 Victims' Association, under the leadership of Hans Ephraimson-Abt, successfully lobbied U.S. Congress and the airline industry to accept an agreement that would ensure that future victims of airline incidents would be compensated quickly and fairly by increasing compensation and lowering the burden of proof of airliner misconduct. This legislation has had far-reaching effects for the victims of subsequent aircraft disasters.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The U.S. decided to utilize military radars to extend air traffic control radar coverage from out from Anchorage. The FAA also established a secondary radar system (ATCBI-5) on Saint Paul Island. In 1986, the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union set up a joint air traffic control system to monitor aircraft over the North Pacific, thereby giving the Soviet Union formal responsibility to monitor civilian air traffic, and setting up direct communication links between the controllers of the three countries.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On September 16, 1983 a White House press secretary read a statement on the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. It is announced that the GPS system should be available for civil aviation with the planned completion in 1988. This communication was sometimes understood as the release of the military project for the general public. However, the GPS system was developed from the start on for military and civilian navigation.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: The regular air route between Seoul and Moscow started in April 1990 as the result of the Nordpolitik policy of South Korea, operated by Aeroflot and Korean Air; meanwhile, all 9 of Korean Air's European routes would start passing through Soviet airspace. This was the first time Korean Air aircraft was officially permitted to pass through Soviet airspace.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Alvin Snyder, the director of worldwide television for the United States Information Agency, was the producer of the video shown to the U.N. Security Council on September 6, 1983. In an article in "The Washington Post" on September 1, 1996, he stated that he had been given only limited access to the transcripts of the Soviet communication when he produced the video in 1983. When he received full insight into the Soviet transmissions in 1993, he says he realized that: "The Russians (sic) believed the plane to be an RC-135 reconnaissance plane" and that "Osipovich (the Soviet fighter pilot) could not identify the plane" and "That he fired warning cannon shots and tipped his wings, an international signal to force the plane to land". Some of these statements were contradicted by the pilot in an interview with "The New York Times", in which he confirmed that he did fire warning shots, but that they would not have been visible as they were not tracers.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In a March 15, 2001, interview, Valery Kamensky, then Commander of the Soviet Far East Military District Air Defense Force and direct superior to General Kornukov, opined that such a shoot-down of a civilian passenger plane could not happen again in view of the changing political conditions and alliances. In this interview, Kamensky stated, "It is still a mystery what happened to the bodies of the crew and passengers on the plane. According to one theory, right after the detonation of the rocket, the nose and tail section of the jumbo fell off and the mid-fuselage became a sort of wind tunnel so the people were swept through it and scattered over the surface of the ocean. Yet in this case, some of the bodies were to have been found during the search operations in the area. The question of what actually happened to the people has not been given a distinct answer."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: On September 1, 2003, commenting on the 20th anniversary of the shoot-down article in RIA Novosti, Mikhail Prozumentshchikov, Deputy Director of the Russian State Archives of Recent History disclosed that the Soviet naval forces in the search for KAL 007 in international waters, already "knew better where [it] had been downed" while conducting their search and that nothing was found "especially as the USSR was not particularly interested."


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: In 2015, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declassified diplomatic documents which revealed that two months after the catastrophe, a high-ranking official of the U.S. administration confidentially informed Japan's diplomats that the Soviet Union had mistaken the aircraft with an American reconnaissance plane.


title: Korean Air Lines Flight 007

text: Korean Air still flies from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Seoul. However, the flight no longer stops at Anchorage or flies to Gimpo International Airport as it now flies directly to Incheon International Airport. Flight number 007 has been retired since, using flight numbers for two separate flights as 82, 85 and 250. , the separate flights were using an Airbus A380 and a Boeing 777.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: Sandeep Unnikrishnan, AC (15 March 1977 – 28 November 2008) was an Indian Army officer, who was serving in the 51 Special Action Group of the National Security Guards on deputation. He was killed in action during the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. He was consequently awarded the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest peacetime gallantry award, on 26 January 2009.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: Sandeep Unnikrishnan came from a Malayali family residing in Bangalore, where they had moved from Kozhikode, Kerala. He was the only son of retired ISRO officer K. Unnikrishnan and Dhanalakshmi Unnikrishnan.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: Unnikrishnan attended The Frank Anthony Public School, Bangalore, graduating in 1995 in the ISC Science stream. He wanted to join the armed forces from childhood. He was married to Neha.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: Unnikrishnan joined the National Defence Academy (India) (NDA), Pune, Maharashtra in 1995. He was a part of the Oscar Squadron (No. 4 Battalion) and a graduate of the 94th Course NDA. He held a Bachelor of Arts degree.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: In Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun, he was the part of 104th regular course. On 12 June 1999, he graduated from IMA and got commissioned as Lieutenant in the 7th Battalion of the Bihar Regiment (Infantry) of Indian Army. During Operation Vijay in July 1999, he was regarded positively at the forward posts in the face of heavy artillery firing and small arms fire by Pakistan troops. On the evening of 31 December 1999, he led a team of six soldiers and established a post 200 metres from the opposing side and under direct observation and fire.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: Unnikrishnan received a substantive promotion to captain on 12 June 2003, followed by promotion to major on 13 June 2005. During the 'Ghatak course' (at the Infantry wing Commando School, Belgaum), he topped the course twice earning an "Instructor grading" and Commendation.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: He was also trained in High Altitude Warfare school, Gulmarg. After serving in different locations including Siachen, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat (during 2002 Gujarat Riots), Hyderabad and Rajasthan, he was selected to join the National Security Guards. On completion of training, he was assigned as the training officer of the 51 Special Action Group (51 SAG) of NSG, in January 2007 and also participated in various operations of the NSG.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: On the night of 26 November 2008, several buildings in South Mumbai were attacked. One of the buildings where hostages were held was the iconic 100-year-old Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan was the team commander of 51 Special Action Group (51 SAG) deployed in the hotel to rescue the hostages. He entered the hotel with a group of 10 commandos and reached the sixth floor through the staircase. After evacuating hostages in the sixth and fifth floors, as the team descended the stairs, they suspected terrorists in a room on fourth floor, which was locked from the inside. As the commandos broke open the door, the round of fire by the terrorists hit Commando Sunil Kumar Yadav in both legs. Unnikrishnan managed to save and evacuate Yadav, but terrorists disappeared after blasting a grenade inside the room. Unnikrishnan and his team continued evacuating hostages from the hotel, for around 15 hours. On 27 November, around midnight Unnikrishnan and his team decided to take the path of the central staircase of hotel to go up, as it was their only path towards the hostages and terrorists. As expected, when terrorists saw commandos coming up through the central staircase, they ambushed NSG team, from the first floor, in which 27-year-old Commando Sunil Kumar Jodha was grievously injured by seven bullets (three in the left hand, one on his right palm, two in the right shoulder and one in his chest). Unnikrishnan arranged for his evacuation and continued to engage terrorists in the firefight. He then decided to chase terrorists alone, as they were trying to escape to the next floor. In the encounter that followed, he managed to corner all four terrorists to the Ballroom in the northern end of Taj Mahal hotel, single-handedly but sacrificed his life in the course. His last words were, "Don't come up, I will handle them" according to the NSG officials. NSG commandos later killed all four terrorists trapped in the Ballroom and Wasabi restaurant of the Mumbai Taj hotel.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: At Unnikrishnan's funeral, mourners chanted "Sandeep Unnikrishnan Amar Rahe" ("May Sandeep Unnikrishnan('s name) remain eternal"). Thousands of people lined up outside his Bangalore house to pay their respects. His funeral was held with full military honours.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: The Mother Dairy Double Road in Bengaluru, a stretch from Federal Mogul on Doddaballapur Road to MS Palya junction, within Yelahanka New Town, was renamed Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan Road in his honour. A bust of Unnikrishnan is installed on Ramamurthy Nagar Outer Ring Road junction in Bangalore and is named in his honour.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: There is a bust of Unnikrishnan at the entrance of Indian Education Society on Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road, Mumbai. An army housing complex at Whitefield, Bangalore is named 'Sandeep Vihar' and a bust of Unnikrishnan is installed in the center of Housing complex.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: A film, titled "Major", stars Adivi Sesh in the titular role of Unnikrishnan. The film is produced by actor Mahesh Babu, Sony Pictures International Productions, and A+S Movies.


title: Sandeep Unnikrishnan

text: The principal photography of the film began in February 2020, and was released worldwide on 3 June 2022.


title: Andrew Yang

text: Andrew Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American businessman, attorney, lobbyist, and politician. Yang was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary. He is the co-chair of the Forward Party, alongside former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.


title: Andrew Yang

text: The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Yang was born and raised in New York State. He attended Brown University and Columbia Law School. Yang became a prominent candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. His signature policy was a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month as a response to job displacement by automation. Yang has been credited with popularizing the idea of universal basic income through his candidacy and activism.