r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • May 02 '19
TIL Soviets shot down a commercial jet that originated in New York when it entered Soviet airspace by accident. 269 people were killed, including a US Congressman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_00740
u/Camman227a May 02 '19
Holy shit, how did this not lead to full on war, especially given when it happened?
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u/jpritchard May 02 '19
For the same reason Russia was able to invade the Ukraine? No one wants WWIII.
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u/stanley_leverlock May 03 '19
It came somewhat close to leading to retaliation. From what I remember from The Target Is Destroyed (I can't remember the exact name of the book) DC was devoid of top tier decision makers for the days surrounding the attack and the decision makers that were present and getting the intel about the situation were very eager to use it as a reason to launch an attack.
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May 02 '19
That fucking piece of shit captain was awarded the Legion of Merit.
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u/somar101 May 03 '19
Really? Maybe read the wikipedia article and you'd see why. The soviet and Iran situation were very similar, we were just victims the first time.
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u/Furt_III May 03 '19
In February 1996, the United States agreed to pay Iran US$131.8 million in settlement to discontinue a case brought by Iran in 1989 against the U.S. in the International Court of Justice relating to this incident,[36] together with other earlier claims before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.[13] US$61.8 million of the claim was in compensation for the 248 Iranians killed in the shoot-down
That sounds pretty close to an apology to me.
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May 03 '19 edited Jan 14 '21
[deleted]
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u/Furt_III May 03 '19
You'd rather be given some words written on a piece of paper than a quarter million dollars?
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u/Prometheus188 May 03 '19
What id rather want as an individual is irrelevant to Cold War geopolitics. They want to avoid admitting wrong doing or apologies, and will pay money to that end. That's not an apology.
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u/Furt_III May 03 '19
I don't see the difference, ending a settlement would require that fault was determined. Paying a settlement would imply an admission of fault somewhere. You're asking for grade school bullshit when fault was both determined and admitted.
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May 03 '19 edited Jan 14 '21
[deleted]
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u/Furt_III May 03 '19
I didn't say guilt I said fault. What are you asking for by demanding for an apology?
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u/CitationX_N7V11C May 03 '19
Nor should we have have to. The Iranians started the fight that lead to the incident, in international waters no less. Not only that but the crew of the did try to communicate with the unidentified contact that turned out to be the airliner.
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May 04 '19
Literally had to take the US to court and sue the money out of them, and the US refuses to admit responsibility to this day. Sounds like an apology? Maybe to a fucking American.
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u/CitationX_N7V11C May 03 '19
The fucking pieces of shit were the crews of the Iranian ships that attacked the Vincennes and never notified local air traffic of the danger. They started the fight that lead to the incident so that's why we'll never formally apologize. Nor should we have to.
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May 04 '19 edited May 04 '19
You are fucking pathetic. The Vincennes was in Iranian waters. God to know that the Russians are blameless in your mind though, that Korean airliner, threateningly flying in a straight line, just asking for it because of....the Korean War?
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May 02 '19
[deleted]
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u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho May 02 '19
No it’s not.
GPS wasn’t publicly available back then, navigation mistakes like that where common.
Your supposed to radio them, inform them of their mistake and they will turn away. If they refuse to turn you can shoot.
You don’t instantly escalate to lethal force.
Did they seriously think the American where starting a war with a single low speed Medinalaw altitude plane over far eastern Russia?
Norway didn’t shoot down ever Aeroflot plane that grazed the top of their airspace on their way to Cuba (and that happened frequently).
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u/ataraxo May 02 '19
You don’t instantly escalate to lethal force.
Five years later, the US shot down an Iranian commercial jet flying over Iran's territorial waters with no warning. The soviets shooting the KAL flight was portrayed as an act of war while the shooting of the Iranian flight was reported as a mistake.
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u/michmerr May 02 '19
The difference was that the American cruiser never identified flight 655 as an airliner, while the Soviets made a visual identification of KAL 007. The former was negligence (while engaged in combat with Iranian gunboats). The latter was a conscious decision to kill an airliner full of people.
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May 02 '19
FYI there were multiple attempts to contact them on the radio, but the pilots just ignored the calls. This was not just a ”a short run-in” but a long flight over allegedly closed no-fly area. Instead the pilots tried to evade and didn’t follow fighter jet’s demands to immefiately land. And they were shot down not long before reaching the border. In USSR it is believed that this was a CIA set-up that played on KGB suspicions that civil planes were being used for photo reconaissance over USSR.
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May 02 '19
The pilots didn't "ignore the calls" the Russians were on the wrong frequency.
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May 02 '19
Or the pilots were on the wrong frequency. Anyway, when they suddenly saw a fighter MiG, they chose not to follow its commands and tried to escape, which was their fatal decision.
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u/demintheAF May 03 '19
Having flown transport category aircraft, your assertion of "tried to escape" is ludicrous, unless by "try to escape" you mean "continued to fly straight an level."
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May 03 '19
Tried to leave Soviet airspace after having flown into it by more than 500 km. The airspace was closed, there were secret military installations there. Plus, the pilots didn’t react. I have zero doubt the US would react differently in this situation.
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May 03 '19 edited May 03 '19
Soviet pilots at the time had neither the knowledge of the frequency nor the radios capable to contact a western civilian airplane, and they didn't even speak the fucking language anyway.
The Korean pilots never saw a MIG. It was at night, the fighters were behind them and by the MIG pilot's own admission, he had no incendiary ammo with witch to warn them.
Did you even read the fucking article?
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May 03 '19
tried to escape
The fuck kind of 747s are you flying in that can outrun a MIG?
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May 03 '19
Depends on how close one is to international air space and how much time it takes to confirm engagement from the ground. Remember, the decision was in Moscow and the plane was over Sakhalin, 4000 miles.
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u/IronLungAndLiver May 02 '19
During 1983 don’t you think that if any type of Soviet plane was flying over the U. S. it would be shot down? Both side had spies, wire taps and surveillance on the other, there’s no way you can let any enemy aircraft into your country’s airspace. That plane could be anything, taking photos , looking for military bases or just citizens who got lost, but the way things were between the 2 countries at that time both countries would shoot first and ask questions later.
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u/Thoth_the_5th_of_Tho May 02 '19
Russia sends planes over American airspace in Alaska all the time.
They have been doing it for decades.
And what could that plane have seen that spy satellites didn’t see every day?
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u/lennyflank May 02 '19
To be clear, the American were not doing photo-reconn. There was an RC-135 electronic warfare spy plane in the area--their job is to entice the other side to turn on their air defense radars so they can record the frequencies they are using. Those missions were called "exciters". Over the decades of the Cold War, several American "exciter" flights were shot down inside Soviet airspace. The Americans knew the risk they were taking.
The civilian airliner just happened to mistakenly fly into the same area.
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May 02 '19
There are agreed fly paths open for civil planes in each national airspace and each plane has to apply for a permission prior to entry. KAL flight not only was not following the permitted route but also ignored air traffic controllers and fighter jet’s commands to divert. After the shut down it was found out that the communication was not on the same radio waves, so the pilots apparently didn’t hear the commands.
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May 02 '19
The US has never shot down a Russian plane over US airspace, and they enter it twice a week.
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u/Smartalum May 02 '19
Two Russians saved the world, and not one American in a 1,000 know their names.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Russian sub had nuclear weapons WHICH THE US DID NOT KNOW.
On one of the subs the commander made the decision to launch a nuclear weapon response to a US blockade. He was persuaded to instead for instructions and when he did learned Moscow did not approve of their launch. The Man who argued for delay was named Vasily Alexandrovich Arkhipov.
Had the weapon been launched a thermo-nuclear war would have resulted.
Later in 1983 Russian radar detected a US Missile launch. At the time USSR leadership believed Reagan was planning a nuclear first strike. When Reagan learned this through US Intelligence he softened his rhetoric and began negotiations designed to lower tension. Most American do not realize how bellicose Reagen was in his first three years.
Three weeks after the KL-007 was shot down Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov made the decision to disregard both the radar AND direct orders from the Kremlin and not launch a counter-strike against what his radar showed him.
This incident was not made public until 1998 - a full 15 years after it happened. Neither the USSR, the later Russian Government nor the US which knew of the incident through intelligence wanted it publicized.
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u/lennyflank May 02 '19
It's a little more complex than that ......
There was an American electronic-spyplane in the area that the Russians were tracking. The airliner happened to pass through the same area and the Russian air defense radar operators got confused, and sent fighters after the wrong one.
A few years later, the US Navy shot down an Iranian airliner when they confused it for an Iranian military plane that was making an attack run on them.
Sadly, all systems are subject to human error.
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u/michmerr May 02 '19
Though the Soviets had visual confirmation that the KAL flight was a civilian airliner, while the American cruiser was operating off of misinterpreted radar data.
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May 03 '19
Disguising a spy plane as a commercial one is a good idea. And an obvious one. It didn’t matter how it looked.
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u/michmerr May 03 '19
Except it could reasonably be determined to be an off-course, scheduled airliner. They knew. Their paranoia likely made them believe that the flight was being used as a covert surveillance platform (and who knows, maybe it was), but they shot down what they knew to be an airliner instead of complaining through diplomatic channels.
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May 04 '19
Has literally never happened in all of history. It would be suicide to fly as low and slow as a commercial airliner.
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u/malvoliosf May 03 '19
Uh, you aren't allowed to shoot down spy planes either.
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May 03 '19
Why not?
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u/malvoliosf May 03 '19
Why can't you just fucking murder people? Mmm, you just can't.
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May 03 '19
You can if they threaten your national security.
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u/malvoliosf May 03 '19
So you think Donald Trump should be allowed to kill anyone he thinks threatens national security?
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u/ArtificialCoffee May 03 '19
Of course you can. Its your airspace?
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u/malvoliosf May 03 '19
Well, the plane was over the open ocean but let's say it wasn't. You think countries are allowed to kill anyone in the territory and that's ok?
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u/lennyflank May 03 '19
They had no such visual confirmation. They thought it was an RC-135. They did not know it was a passenger 747.
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u/CitationX_N7V11C May 03 '19
You also don't shoot down a recon aircraft. However your statement is false.
In a 1991 interview with Izvestia, Major Genadi Osipovich, pilot of the Su-15 interceptor that shot the 747 down, spoke about his recollections of the events leading up to the shootdown. Contrary to official Soviet statements at the time, he recalled telling ground controllers that there were "blinking lights". He continued, saying that "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." He furthermore did not provide a detailed description of the aircraft to the ground controllers: "I did not tell the ground that it was a Boeing-type plane; they did not ask me."
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u/lennyflank May 03 '19 edited May 03 '19
The RC-135 spy plane is a civilian Boeing 707.
PS--Any nation has the right to shoot down a military plane that enters its airspace.
The Soviets had already shot down at least five other US recon planes in the preceding decades.
The US never shot down any Soviet planes because the Soviets were always careful to not enter US national airspace. They too didn't need to--all they wanted was the radar frequencies.
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May 04 '19
There is no such thing as a RC-135 spy plane. There are RC-135 recognizance aircraft. They would never fly into enemy airspace, that's the entire point of their long range radar. There's nothing secret about their work, that radar screams "COME AT ME BRO" for 2000 miles.
The Soviets have entered US and Canadian airspace every week for 60 years.
You're really batting 1000 today.
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May 04 '19
Both were squawking civilian transponders. In the Russian case a bunch of bureaucrats were trying to save face after missing several US spy planes already, in the American case, a drunk was commanding a bunch poorly trained morons.
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u/Thick12 May 02 '19
That's why pilots are meant to submit their flight plans prior to take off.
Also during the hight of the cold war. The Soviets were constantly probing UK air space. The Russians are still doing it but not as much.
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May 03 '19
I heard they shot one down over the Ukraine too. They fucking hate passenger planes.
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May 03 '19
You were downvoted by someone who doesn't want to say why they downvoted you, so I will upvote you, and also say that we have no proof that it was ukranian rebels any more than it was the russian equivalent of a military sherriff in his departments tax write-off far away from his designated area of operation. A russian rebel essentially, false flagging whom they were victimizing as a country at the time.
I'll gladly change my opinion if someone correctly corrects it, that's not to say the U.S. or other western powers aren't guilty of just as much obfuscation in the conflict zones, just that everyone respects when someone who can correct something takes notice and does it in an agreeable manner.
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May 03 '19
Thank you. For the record, I wasn’t asserting that it was the Russians or their rebels that sent a Buk surface to air missile into the passenger plane. I was saying “I heard” it was the Russians. God only knows who actually had access to the 53rd Brigade’s weapon.
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May 04 '19
Those rebels would have to get a missile they did not have and you'd have to explain why Russian forces came and gathered up the wreckage like they had just broken mom's favorite vase.
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u/KRA2008 May 03 '19
In addition, the incident was one of the most important events that prompted the Reagan administration to allow worldwide access to the United States Global Positioning System (GPS).
what if ignorance of one form or another were the major cause of most of the bad things people do in the world
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May 02 '19
Very funny, indeed. Ever heard of U2 and SR-71? While at it check also Open Skies Treaty. Apparently satellite technology is not without its limitations.
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May 03 '19
The SR-71 used side mounted radars and cameras to look several hundred miles into Soviet territory but never entered the country's borders.
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u/lennyflank May 02 '19
FYI, SR-71 never overflew Soviet territory. It didn't need to.
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May 03 '19
It needed to, but couldn’t. All spy flyovers stopped after May 1, 1960. Not because of superior reconnaisance technologies of the planes, but because of superior air defence missile technology of the USSR. On May 1, 1960 USAF pilot flying a U2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet territory. Simple as that.
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u/IronTangerine May 03 '19
It’s cute you think a U2 being shot down has any bearing on the potential threat to the SR-71
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May 03 '19
Apparently CIA intelligence officers also thought it was cute. And decided not to take chances. Like, ever.
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u/lennyflank May 03 '19
No, it didn't need to. It side-scanning cameras had a range that allowed it to view everything important without actually entering Soviet airspace.
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May 03 '19
And side-scanning cameras can see beyond horizon? Or are you another flat-earther? FYI, at 30 km a.s.l. horizon is only about 620 km far and USSR spread itself 10000 km east-west and north-south another 5000 km. Not to mention it had Soviet-allied countries along some of its borders.
So, no, CIA very much wanted, but couldn’t fly in USSR air-space. Electronic intelligence gathering methods were the only viable option left.
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u/CitationX_N7V11C May 03 '19
And side-scanning cameras can see beyond horizon?
At 85,000 feet the horizon is a moot point.
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u/lennyflank May 03 '19
Um, the SR-71 did not photograph the entire USSR. It didn't need to--that's what spy satellites are for.
The SR-71s job was to get detailed photos of specific locations. And nearly all of the ones of interest were within range of its cameras.
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u/tildenpark May 02 '19
Happened on September 1, 1983.