Soviet air defense shot down a South Korean civilian aircraft. "People, of course, sorry, but we acted correctly." Hot Cold War

Image caption A monument to the fallen citizens of Japan was erected at the site of the tragedy

30 years ago, a tragedy occurred in the sky over the Pacific Ocean, which some Russian sources to this day bashfully call an "incident": a Soviet air defense fighter shot down a South Korean civilian airliner that violated the air border of the USSR. All 269 people on board, including 23 children, died.

Two key mysteries remain unsolved. Who gave the fatal order? Why the Boeing crew, which, according to official version, ordered to change course and land at the Soviet airfield, did not obey?

On a wave of emotions in the USSR, there were suggestions that the Americans deliberately sent a plane into Soviet airspace in order to test the strength of a potential enemy's air defense, in the USA - that the "Russian communists" deliberately destroyed civilian passengers in order to intimidate the world with their inexorable cruelty.

Declassified documents and data from the flight recorders of the downed Boeing, which fell into the hands of the Soviet authorities, testify that a monstrous misunderstanding has happened, multiplied by the atmosphere of the Cold War.

Oppressive environment

After the events in Afghanistan and Poland, Ronald Reagan came to power in Washington, and Yuri Andropov in Moscow, Soviet-American relations fell to their lowest point since the Caribbean crisis.

In the spring of 1982, two American aircraft carrier groups rounded Kamchatka and entered the neutral waters of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, on the shores of which there were bases of Soviet missile submarines.

In March-April 1983, three aircraft carriers with escort ships conducted three-week exercises in the Aleutian Islands.

On April 4, 1983, six American A-7 Korsair attack aircraft entered the airspace over Soviet territorial waters in the Malaya Kuril ridge and simulated an airstrike on Zeleny Island.

The political and military leadership of the USSR was shocked by the helplessness of the Soviet air defense revealed during the incident. As a result of the investigation, Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov ordered the urgent replacement of the MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters in the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin with more advanced MiG-31: as stated in the order, to prevent possible provocations.

"They really got fed up with it," recalled former Assistant Secretary of State for Defense Industry and Technology William Schneider.

When Andropov took over in 1982, I felt a new courage and confidence in Arbatov and Primakov: the USSR finally had a leader who would make everything work and put Soviet power on an equal footing with the West Strobe Talbot
American politician

For its part, the Soviet Union on November 24, 1982 withdrew from negotiations on limiting medium-range missiles in Europe, on December 8 - from negotiations on strategic weapons and conventional weapons on the European continent. Diplomatic demarches were accompanied by threatening rhetoric in the spirit of "the misanthropic plans of the imperialists."

Long ago placed at their western borders a large number of medium-range missiles aimed at Europe, the Soviet Union categorically, to the point of hysteria, objected to similar US plans, while rejecting the "zero option" proposed by the Americans.

In a November 24 statement, Andropov threatened the United States with measures that would nullify the effects of Pershings and Tomahawks and the hypothetical Star Wars program in Europe. Military analysts immediately figured out that it was about the constant duty of Soviet nuclear submarines near the Atlantic and pacific coast USA.

On June 14-18, 1982, the USSR conducted the "Shield-82" exercises with a full-scale imitation of a nuclear missile strike, called in the West a seven-hour nuclear war.

At a meeting with the leadership of the KGB in May 1981, Andropov called the main task not to overlook the similar intentions of a potential adversary.

The largest Soviet intelligence operation since World War II, diverting forces from political and economic espionage, was carried out from 1981 to 1984, peaking in 1983. Not only military activity was constantly monitored, but also many indirect signs, for example, an increase in donor blood supplies.

For Soviet diplomats, what was happening was a shock. For at least twenty years no one seriously considered the possibility of nuclear war.

"I learned about this from the KGB resident. We regarded all these fears rather skeptically, but we still had to take them seriously, since Moscow could have secret information that we were not aware of," recalled the then soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in Washington.

The fragility of the world at that time is evidenced by the state of emergency on the night of September 26 (Moscow time), 1983.

Due to the exposure of the sensors of the Soviet satellite by sunlight reflected from high-altitude clouds, a false signal was received at the missile defense command post in Serpukhov about the launch of American ICBMs. Only the professionalism and common sense of the senior shift, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, did not allow a nuclear alarm to be declared in the USSR.

In an environment where the parties, in the favorite expression of journalists, "looked at each other through the slots of the sights," anything could happen. And it happened.

On the night of tragedy

Passenger "Boeing-747" (registration number HL7442) of the South Korean company Korean Air performed regular flight KAL-007 on the New York - Seoul route with a refueling stop at Anchorage, Alaska.

On board were 23 crew members and 246 passengers: South Koreans, Americans (including Congressman Larry McDonald), Taiwanese, Japanese and Filipinos.

On September 1 at 03:00 local time (11:00 GMT), he took off from Anchorage. The route ran over the Pacific Ocean, skirting the territory of the USSR.

Flying in the area of ​​the radio beacon in Bethel, the last control point on American soil, the plane deviated from the course in a northwesterly direction by 20 kilometers. The situation was regular and did not give grounds for alarm, but a minor error, gradually accumulating, had grown to more than 500 kilometers by the time the aircraft died.

According to an investigation carried out international organization civil aviation(ICAO) and subsequently confirmed by information from the "black boxes", the crew incorrectly set up the autopilot, and subsequently did not perform manual checks of the current coordinates, relying on automation.

At 04:51 local time, the plane entered Soviet airspace and continued flying over the restricted area in Kamchatka, where the Soviet missile base was located.

On that day, another test of the Soviet ballistic missile SS-25 was expected, which was supposed to start from the Plesetsk cosmodrome and hit the target at the Kamchatka Kura training ground.

Information in such cases was limited to a two-line TASS message stating that the test was successful.

Of course, the Americans were not without interest whether this was really so. R-135 reconnaissance aircraft were sent to the shores of Kamchatka every time, which, with the help of on-board equipment, observed the flight and fall of the rocket.

Our actions were absolutely correct. Soviet pilots have a ban on firing at civilian aircraft, but in this case their actions were fully justified From a speech by USSR Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov at a meeting of the Politburo

P-135s were built on the basis of Boeings and outwardly almost did not differ from them, especially in the dark and in the clouds.

The reconnaissance aircraft reached the USSR border at 02:35 and began cruising in a given area. At a certain moment, he and the passenger "Boeing" became so close that they merged into one point on the screens of distant radars.

Then the "Boeing" continued to move towards Kamchatka, and the P-135 retired in a direction that more or less coincided with the international air corridor.

Soviet operators took the passenger liner for an air reconnaissance aircraft.

Six MiG-23 fighters rose to intercept, which escorted the suspicious object over Kamchatka and returned to base when it left Soviet airspace at 06:05 and continued flying over the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

It was recorded by means of electronic control that at 06:10 the crew reported by radio to ground services in Alaska and Japan that the flight was proceeding safely.

At 06:13 the Boeing crossed the Soviet border again, this time over Sakhalin. Two Su-15 interceptors from the Dolinsk-Sokol air base took off towards them. At 06:24 an order was received: "Destroy the target."

Captain Gennady Osipovich fired two missiles that hit the airliner. After 12 minutes, the wreckage fell into the sea from a height of nine kilometers in the area of ​​Moneron Island southwest of Sakhalin.

The commander of the air division in which Osipovich served, Anatoly Kornukov, was neither encouraged nor punished. Subsequently, he became an Army General and Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force and Air Defense. However, it is difficult to imagine that such a decision was made at the divisional level.

The stamp of the "cold war" fell on this entire tragic incident Georgy Kornienko
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR

Did they report to seriously ill Yuri Andropov? According to Alexander Korzhakov, apparently, yes. But it should be borne in mind that the future chief bodyguard of Boris Yeltsin at that time was an ordinary employee of the 9th KGB Directorate.

And if not, who took responsibility? Air Defense Command? Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov? Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov?

Even members of the Politburo did not know this.

"We were confronted with a fact. Who made the decision? Did the general secretary know? It remained unclear," Vitaly Vorotnikov wrote in his diary.

"Not for a minute did I think that I could shoot down a passenger plane. Anything but that!" - subsequently claimed Gennady Osipovich.

Since air passengers tend to sleep at night, the Boeing flew with the windows closed.

The misconception could also be facilitated by the fact that when the interceptors approached, the South Korean airliner began to slow down, which looked like an attempt to break away from pursuit (at a speed of less than 400 km / h, a supersonic fighter falls into a tailspin). According to the ICAO commission, the crew at that time was starting to climb.

According to Osipovich, he could not visually distinguish a civilian Boeing from a R-135, because he was not taught this, and did not make radio contact with the crew, since this would have to change to a different frequency. He testifies that he gave signals by flashing side lights, and four minutes before the opening of fire to kill, he fired several warning bursts in the direction of the aircraft, having used up 243 shells.

How could the Korean crew not notice this?

A fat and well-fed brisk television reporter, an expert on astronauts, interviewed our heroes-pilots, and it became absolutely clear which of the two of them - "stopped". The wide face of a black-haired, strong man calmly looked into the camera, and the word that decided the fate of 269 people was repeated: "enemy From the diary of literary critic Igor Dedkov

Even if someone in the Pentagon or the CIA came up with the idea to probe Soviet air defense in this way, civilian pilots, and even foreigners, would not play with the lives of passengers and their own for any money.

Immediately after receiving news of what had happened, the Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov drew attention to this discrepancy.

“It is not clear to me what the pilot was counting on. He understood that he was going to certain death,” he said at a meeting of the Politburo on September 2.

Subsequently, a member of the Soviet commission for the investigation of the incident, Air Marshal Pyotr Kirsanov, pointed out the strange, in his opinion, circumstances, which consisted in the fact that the Boeing took off from Anchorage with a 40-minute delay, and the first and second pilots were retired officers of the South Korean Air Force, although both are commonplace in civil aviation practice.

The Soviet side also considered suspicious the presence on board of six service passengers who did not pay for tickets - Korean Air employees returning to their homeland.

Osipovich admitted that the pilots might not have seen his sidelights and bursts, since he was flying behind the "Boeing" in the tail and fired not tracer (for lack thereof), but ordinary shells.

"There is no evidence that the Soviet Union tried to warn the aircraft by launching tracers," US Secretary of State George Shultz said at a Sept. 1 press conference.

Whether there was a warning fire at all or not, only the fighter pilot and his superiors knew for sure.

It is possible that they decided to "bang" the alleged reconnaissance aircraft without warning, so that in the future it would be disrespectful. Version, not documented, but quite plausible.

Trouble in the Kremlin

The leadership of the USSR learned about what had happened during a scheduled meeting of the Politburo, which turned out to be historic, since it last time hosted by Yuri Andropov. Routine issues were discussed: the convening of the next plenum of the Central Committee in November, the implementation of the plan for the production of color television sets, trade with Egypt and the current situation in Afghanistan.

The news came like thunder from a clear sky. At first, they did not want to believe the information. The Chief of the General Staff, Ogarkov, who was urgently summoned, firmly stated that the military had no doubts: the plane was reconnaissance.

Since it was late in the evening, nothing concrete was decided. TASS issued a famous statement: "The intruder aircraft did not respond to the signals and continued flying to the side Sea of ​​Japan". The words "retreat towards the Sea of ​​Japan" entered the treasury of Soviet black humor along with the phrases "at the request of the workers" and "I have not read the novel, but I am deeply indignant at it."

Immediately after the meeting, Andropov, as he was going to, flew off to rest in the Crimea, instructing his colleagues once again to "consult and weigh everything." There, his condition deteriorated sharply, and he never returned to active work. Idle tongues said that the Soviet leader was punished by Korean demons.

Anatoly Dobrynin, who was on vacation in Moscow, spoke with Andropov before flying off. According to him, the Secretary General, on the one hand, assured that all this was "Reagan's intrigues", on the other hand, he scolded "stupid generals who do not think at all about big politics." He did not have words of regret for the dead.

The next day, an extraordinary meeting of the Politburo met, where the issue was discussed more calmly and substantively.

The chairman, Konstantin Chernenko, in his opening remarks, suggested focusing on how to minimize the "anti-Soviet campaign."

When reading the recording of the Politburo meeting of September 2, it becomes quite obvious that the top political leadership was taken by surprise, there could be no question of any preliminary planning for this incident. But something else is also certain: the tragedy of the South Korean liner was predetermined by many years of brinkmanship Rudolf Pikhoya
historian

The participants discussed technical details in detail, scolded the Americans and justified their military. Mikhail Gorbachev kept silent for the most part, confining himself to a remark: "The plane was over our territory for a long time. If it strayed off course, the Americans could inform us."

The question of why the Soviet authorities did not try, in turn, to contact the competent representatives of the United States or South Korea, did not arise.

Concerning concrete tactics opinions were divided.

First Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Kornienko, who was in charge of Soviet-American relations, who was invited to the meeting, offered to recognize the tragic accident and apologize to the families of the victims and the governments of their countries, while emphasizing that the incident was provoked by the American side with its reconnaissance flights near the Soviet borders.

But the point of view of Minister of Defense Ustinov prevailed, arguing that everything should be denied.

Ustinov, 74, was in better physical shape than most of his colleagues, and spoke not languidly and streamlined, but self-confidently and with force.

After the meeting, Kornienko called Andropov in the Crimea and tried to defend his position. The General Secretary contacted Ustinov, who scolded Kornienko and advised Andropov not to worry about anything.

The Soviet, American and Japanese navies began searching for the wreckage of the downed aircraft. There was no question of cooperation in those relations.

Two months later, Soviet divers raised the "black boxes" from the bottom, which only ten years later were transferred to ICAO by order of Boris Yeltsin.

Judging by the published data, the Boeing was flying on autopilot all the time, the crew members were calm and carried on ordinary conversations until the last minute. There is no evidence that they knew about the deviation from the route or saw the interceptor.

Off the coast of Sakhalin and Moneron, it was possible to collect 213 items of footwear thrown out by the waves, which were handed over to representatives of the United States and Japan and identified by relatives of the Boeing passengers.

No bodies were found, so conspiracy theorists in the West claimed that the plane landed somewhere on Soviet territory, and the passengers and crew were sent to Siberian camps. An international public committee for their release was even created.

On November 7, 1988, the court of the Federal District of Columbia refused to limit the amount of material claims of the relatives of the dead Americans against Korean Air, recognizing that the crew allowed unprofessionalism and negligence during the flight.

In 1986, the USSR, the USA and Japan created a unified air traffic tracking system over the northern part of Pacific Ocean and established a direct link between their dispatch services.

Only on September 7, the Soviet government acknowledged the fact of the destruction of the liner and expressed regret over the death of innocent people.

"Go back to Washington without delay and try to do everything possible to slowly muffle this conflict, which is completely unnecessary to us," Andropov admonished Dobrynin.

"Little by little" didn't work. A scheduled meeting between Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and Secretary of State Shultz on September 8 in Madrid resulted in an unprecedented scandal with a public exchange of accusations. Reagan called the incident "a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten," "an act of barbarism and inhuman cruelty."

It was late. The world was outraged not only by the fact that innocent people were killed, but also by shameless lies. The damage to the country's reputation was enormous Leonid Mlechin
historian

Thousands of demonstrations were held in South Korea with the burning of Soviet flags.

According to Dobrynin, by the summer of 1983, Andropov realized that Soviet-American relations had reached a dangerous dead end, and he was thinking about how to improve them.

On July 21, the American ambassador gave him a personal message from Reagan. On August 1, Andropov responded by proposing to start with creating a confidential channel for the exchange of opinions.

A few days before the disaster, he asked Dobrynin in detail what kind of person the American president was: "On the one hand, the enemy Soviet Union, on the other hand, in correspondence he looks like a reasonable person.

The death of the "Boeing" put an end to timid attempts at dialogue. Relations remained at a freezing point until the meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik.

Soon, Soviet designers reported on a great achievement: the development of an anti-missile with a nuclear warhead, guaranteed to destroy the "Pershing" when approaching Moscow. True, for this it would be necessary to arrange an atomic explosion over their own capital. Madness ideas were horrified only under Gorbachev, and then the military-industrial complex began to enthusiastically master the allocated funds.

35 years ago, on September 1, 1983, a South Korean Boeing 747 flying from San Francisco to Seoul was shot down by a Soviet fighter over the Sea of ​​Okhotsk.

The plane entered the closed airspace of the USSR, where it was shot down by a fighter plane and crashed southwest of Sakhalin Island. No one survived the crash. The downed plane turned out to be a Boeing 747-230B of the South Korean airline Korean Air, operating flight No. 007, carrying 246 passengers and 23 crew members on the New York - Seoul route (with refueling in Anchorage), deviated from the course by 500 kilometers. The main versions of the causes of the incident are pilot error and a provocation by the US intelligence services.
There are many scattered unexplained facts associated with Flight 007, unconfirmed or subjective evidence, conflicting statements and rumors, which are excellent grounds for doubt and alternative theories.
The incident caused a serious aggravation of the already difficult relations between the USSR and the USA.
Historical context
After the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan and the election of US President Ronald Reagan, a new round of the Cold War began. By September 1983, the military situation in the Far East was extremely tense. In the spring of that year, three US carrier strike groups conducted multi-day exercises near Kamchatka. On April 4, 6 A-7 aircraft in the area of ​​Zeleny Island of the Lesser Kuril Ridge entered the USSR airspace to a depth of 2 to 30 km above the territorial waters of the USSR and carried out simulated bombing on the territory of the island, making several passes to attack ground targets.
Incident details
Boeing 747-230B (registration number HL7442), owned by the South Korean airline Korean Air, operated a scheduled flight on the New York-Seoul route. The plane took off from New York on August 31, then landed in Anchorage for refueling. On September 1 at 3:00 local time (13:00 GMT), he took off from Anchorage and headed for Seoul. There were 246 passengers and 23 crew members on board. The flight route was supposed to pass over the Pacific Ocean east of Kamchatka, then over Japan, skirting the territory of the USSR. However, almost from the very beginning of the flight, the plane began to deviate from the intended route to the west. He violated the airspace of the USSR and flew over Kamchatka, then left the Soviet airspace and, flying over the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, again violated the border over Sakhalin. The maximum deviation from the usual route reached 500 kilometers.

In the territories over which the Boeing flew, there were military installations, and flights foreign aircraft were banned in the area. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to intercept the intruder aircraft. At 18:26 GMT, on orders from the ground, one of the Su-15 fighters (pilot Gennady Osipovich) shot down the liner with missiles. The plane crashed near Moneron Island. All on board were killed.

[... Su-15 pilot Gennady Osipovich received a command from the ground:

- Target violated state border. The goal is to destroy.
“I turned on the afterburner,” says a retired lieutenant colonel, “the heads of the rockets blinked. And suddenly in the headphones:
— Abandon destruction! Get to the height of the target and force it to land.
And I'm already approaching the intruder from below. Having equalized the speed, it began to blink. But he doesn't react.
- Give warning bursts, - it rushes from the ground.
He gave four bursts, spent more than two hundred shells. Yes, what's the point! After all, I have armor-piercing, not incendiary. And hardly anyone can see them at all ...
- But it was reported by our newspapers, quoting " official sources”, which made the warning shots exactly incendiary - luminous, tracer - shells ...
- It is not true. I simply did not have such charges. Therefore, he released armor-piercing.
- But in this case, you really (namely, this is what foreign experts say) could not be seen by the pilots of someone else's aircraft?
“I have no doubt that they noticed me. They paid attention to my blinking. The reaction of the pilots was unequivocal - they soon slowed down. Now we were going about 400 kilometers per hour. And I have more than 400 - with a lower speed, I simply could not go. The calculation, in my opinion, for the violator would be simple: if I do not wish to fall into a tailspin, I will be forced to slip through them. Which is what got...We have already flown over the island: it is narrow in this place. And the target was about to leave me. And at this time, it rushes from the earth:
“The goal is to destroy!…
It's easy to say destroy. But how? Guns?! But I have already used up 243 shells. Ram? Always treated such things badly. Taran is the last chance. I even managed to scroll through my maneuver just in case - I'll climb on top and sit on it. But then the thought came by itself - I fell 2,000 down ... Fast and Furious. He turned on the rockets and offhand led his nose. Happened! I see: there is a capture ...]

From an interview with Gennady Osipovich:

- I can't say with 100% certainty that I was shooting at the Boeing. - It was early morning, the visibility was poor. And yet I saw a double row of porthole lights, and what other plane could it be then? Having received the order to destroy, I fired two rockets at him. One exploded right under the engine, the second - under the belly. I did not see him fall - I reported that the missiles had hit the target, and returned to the base ...

Planned and real route of the "Korean Boeing"

Reaction in the world
The actions of the Soviet Union caused a wave of indignation and protest in the West. American President Ronald Reagan called the incident "a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten", "an act of barbarism and inhuman cruelty" and called the USSR an "evil empire".
Subsequently, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA, Federal Aviation Administration) banned Aeroflot flights to America. The ban remained in effect until April 1986.
President Reagan also stated that once development is complete, the GPS navigation system will be freely available for civilian purposes such as air navigation.
This incident was filmed and repeatedly cited by Western politicians as an example of the "inhuman" military doctrine of the USSR. This practice ended on July 3, 1988, when the American cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iran Air passenger plane with 290 passengers over the Persian Gulf.

Such evidence leaves some doubt as to the identification of the Boeing as passenger flight used by individual researchers. At the same time, this evidence is unreliable and subjective, and there is no information about the conduct of any objective examinations or the availability of physical evidence in this regard.
International investigations
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) conducted two investigations: one immediately after the crash and another eight years later, after copies of all black box records and copies of all negotiations between command posts in the Far East on the night of August 31 to September 1. Both commissions concluded that the most likely cause of the flight diversion was that the KAL007 pilots did not properly set up the autopilot and then did not perform proper checks to update the current position. That is, the violation of the airspace of the USSR was unintentional, and in reality the Korean airliner did not participate in the reconnaissance operation. This conclusion suggests the complete incompetence or gross negligence of the Korean crew and is questioned by some experts.
On November 7, 1988, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia refused to limit the upper limit on the amount of compensation claimed by relatives of American passengers from Korean Air. The court found that the provisions of the Warsaw Convention limiting this limit could not be applied, since the actions of the pilots contained signs of conscious neglect of their duties (“willful misconduct”). The court pointed out, in particular, that after the incident with the South Korean Boeing in 1978, the company's pilots should have been familiar with the methods of action of Soviet interceptors.

Korean Boeing 747 shot down over Sakhalin

On September 1, 1983, a Boeing 747 aircraft of a South Korean airline violated Soviet airspace, after which it was shot down by a Su-15 fighter. The liner crashed into the sea near Sakhalin Island. 269 ​​people died.

September 1, 1983; ordinary international flight KAL-007 New York - Anchorage (Alaska, USA) - Seoul (South Korea). Approximately four hours after taking off from Anchorage, the Boeing 747 contacted Tokyo Air Traffic Control and reported its progress towards Seoul.

At 17.07 GMT (5.07 am on Sakhalin), the pilots reported that they had passed the checkpoint (although in fact the liner was flying over the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula towards Sakhalin).

At 17.15, the Korean liner asked Tokyo for permission to rise to a height of 11,000 m. The permission was given, and the controller received confirmation - the maneuver was completed. A few minutes later, in Tokyo, they heard the last words of the pilot: “Korien air 007 ...”

At 17.26.22, the Boeing 747-230B reached the point from which 90 seconds of flight remained to international airspace - approximately 19 km. And at that moment he was shot down by the pilot of the Soviet supersonic Su-15 fighter Gennady Osipovich. The Korean liner began to fall in a spiral towards the icy waters of the Sea of ​​​​Japan, off the island of Moneron.

The border intruder was shot down with the help of two weapons systems - a thermal missile that disabled the engine, and a radar homing missile that hit the stabilizer.

Within 14 minutes, a huge plane fell from a height of 11,000 meters into the sea, west of the Russian military bases on Sakhalin Island. According to official figures, there were 269 passengers and crew members on board.

According to Western experts, that night visibility at an altitude of more than 11,000 m was good. Moreover, as they believed, Soviet pilots, like the pilots of the United States and other Western countries, must distinguish the silhouettes of aircraft. Humpbacked "Boeing-747" (it is called "eggplant") you will not confuse with anything. A white-painted jet liner flew over the clouds. In addition, Western intelligence experts agreed that the operators of Soviet radar stations entered into the log information about all commercial flights whose routes passed near the border. Therefore, the error is excluded: the pilot knew that he was attacking a passenger airliner.

Pilot Gennady Osipovich says:

“As usual, on August 31, he took up duty. At the sixth hour, they finally give me the command “air”. I started the engine, turned on the headlight, since the lane was not yet lit, and began to taxi.

I was given a course - the sea. He quickly scored the indicated 8 thousand meters - and slapped. For some reason, I was sure: ours had launched a control target to check the emergency equipment, to train us. And I was raised as the most experienced. It's been eight minutes since the flight. Suddenly, the guidance navigator transmits: “The target is ahead - an intruder. It's heading in the opposite direction."

The weather then was normal. Through the sparse clouds, I soon saw the intruder. What does "saw" mean? I saw ahead a flying dot measuring from two to three centimeters. Her lights were on.

Wait a minute: what is a fighter pilot? It's kind of like a sheepdog, which is always trained on a stranger. I saw that the same one was walking ahead - a stranger. I'm not a traffic police inspector who can stop the violator and demand documents. I followed to stop the flight. The first thing to do is to put him down. And if he does not obey, stop the flight at any cost. I just couldn't have any other thoughts.

So, approaching, I captured it with a radar sight. Immediately, the missile capture heads caught fire. Hovering at a distance of 13 kilometers from him, I reported: “The goal is to capture. I follow her. What to do?" Earth replies: “The target violated the state border. The goal is to destroy…

The first rocket left when the distance between us was 5 kilometers. Only now I really saw the intruder: it is larger than the Il-76, and the outlines are somewhat reminiscent of the Tu-16. The misfortune of all Soviet pilots is that we do not study civilian aircraft of foreign companies. I knew all military aircraft, all reconnaissance aircraft, but this one was not like any of them. However, I never thought for a minute that I would shoot down a passenger plane. Anything but this! How could I admit that I was chasing a Boeing? .. Now I saw that in front of me was a large plane, with lights and flashing lights on.

The first rocket hit him in the tail - a yellow flame flared up. The second demolished half of the left wing - the lights and flashers immediately went out.

They welcomed me as a hero. The whole regiment met! The youth looked at me with envy. And the old people immediately boarded - put the bottle! .. I remember: the engineer of the regiment hugged him, shaking his hand and shouting: “Everything worked, well done!” In a word, rejoicing. After all, it is not every day that the violator can be “filled up”. True, already on the ground I had some incomprehensible sensation. And when the division commander called, I asked just in case: was it ours? “No,” he answered me. - There was a foreigner. So twist a hole in shoulder straps for a new sprocket.

All this was on the morning of September 1st. And then the unimaginable began ... A commission arrived. Everyone suddenly began to look at me like I was a son of a bitch - of course, except for the regimental guys.

Later, I replayed that situation in my head many times. And I can honestly say: I had no idea that a passenger plane was flying ahead. I saw in front of me a violator of the border, which must be destroyed. During my service, I climbed to intercept many times, I dreamed of such a situation. I knew: if the intruder appeared, I would not miss him. Even a dream a few years before saw a very similar to what happened in reality. So - do not miss the intruder - if you want, the essence of the interceptor pilot.

Soon the Minister of Defense Ustinov called - and everyone, as if on command, began to smile again. Correspondents of Central Television immediately flew in ... "

Even fifteen years later, journalists asked Osipovich if he should have opened fire. The former pilot, who had already retired, replied that if he had received such a command today, he would have carried it out without hesitation, perhaps even earlier, because he did not doubt for a minute that he had a reconnaissance aircraft in front of him. Otherwise, Osipovich says, he would have been fired from the army or even put on trial. Further, the pilot rightly noted that in such a situation, the Americans would not hesitate to shoot down the intruder, and much faster than we did.

For 18 hours, no official clarification was given about the missing liner. Finally, US Secretary of State George Shultz stunned the world by announcing that American intelligence experts had learned by analyzing information provided by computers: KAL-007 was shot down in the air by the Soviet military. "People around the world are shocked by this incident," said President Ronald Reagan. One of the American congressmen said: "Attacking an unarmed civilian aircraft is like attacking a bus with schoolchildren."

For two days, representatives of the Soviet Union did not give any comments. TASS then released a statement regarding " unidentified aircraft", who "grossly violated the state border and invaded great depth into the airspace of the Soviet Union. It was alleged that the interceptor fighters only fired warning shots with tracer rounds. There were also hints in the statement that the flight was carried out under the direction of the Americans for espionage purposes.

Passions in the international arena ran high. Demonstrations of protest against the actions of the USSR took place around the world. "Civilized countries do not recognize diversion as a capital crime," raged Jean Kirkpatrick, US representative to the UN. The delegates listened to a tape recording of the Soviet pilot's radio communications. The film obtained from the Japan National Defense Administration proved that the plane had been shot down. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko said: “Soviet territory, the borders of the Soviet Union are sacred. Regardless of who resorts to provocations of this kind, he must know that he will bear the full brunt of responsibility for such actions.

From Korea, grieving relatives flew to Hokkaido, and were taken by ferry to the waters where the body of a child, one of the passengers on the fateful flight, was found. In memory of all the dead, wreaths and bouquets of fresh flowers were lowered into the water.

Despite the harsh weather and the great depth of the ocean gorges, the search engines continued to work until November 7th. The truth was to be established using computer recordings and data from the last hours of KAL-007's flight, obtained with the help of top secret equipment and intelligence observers.

Eight days after the plane crash, Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Ogarkov spoke on Soviet television with new version. While implicitly acknowledging that Soviet fighters "stopped" the airliner with two air-to-air missiles, he claimed that Soviet ground surveillance had confused KAL-007 with an American spy plane in the same area. The marshal accused the Korean airliner of being involved in spying for the United States. Ogarkov spoke about the parallel courses along which the KAL-007 and the American RC-135 aircraft, which was carrying out a reconnaissance mission, flew. A purely military decision to destroy a passenger airliner was made by the commander of the Far Eastern Military District, and not by the highest military or civilian leadership, the marshal emphasized.

Western observers vigorously objected to Ogarkov. Yes, they said, an American RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft had indeed passed 145 kilometers from KAL-007 two hours before the missile attack, flying in the opposite direction. But a Soviet fighter pilot observed a Korean airliner that is one and a half times the size of an RC-135. Osipovich twice reported seeing navigation and flashing lights.

The Soviet side continued to insist that the commander of the Korean airliner, Chon, deliberately steered his airliner off course in order to pass over a very secret area. On Sakhalin Island there is a naval center and six military air bases that were of strategic importance. Test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles were carried out on the Kamchatka Peninsula. This is a vital line of Soviet defense. In the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, which stretched between them, nuclear submarines cruised, whose missiles were aimed at targets in the United States.

In the West, it was believed that there was no need to endanger the lives of civilians for reconnaissance of secret objects, since the Boeing 747, flying at night and on high altitude, could not get valuable information. South Korean President Chung Doo-hwan irritatedly dismissed Marshal Ogarkov's explanation: "No one in the world, except the Soviet authorities, would believe that a 70-year-old old man or a four-year-old child would be allowed to fly in a civilian aircraft whose task is to violate Soviet airspace for espionage purposes" . Indeed, with the exception of one US congressman, the rest of the passengers are ordinary citizens.

But there were no fewer questions to be answered. Why did an experienced pilot, using the most modern equipment, deviate so far into the depths of Soviet territory? All three "inertial navigation systems" (INS) installed on the Korean aircraft had gyroscopes and accelerometers, which should guide the aircraft along a predetermined route. To avoid failure in the system, all three computers worked autonomously, receiving information independently of each other. Did it happen that the wrong coordinates were entered into all three computers? Is it possible that the crew neglected to check the INS coordinates with the coordinates on the flight charts, as is usually done? Could an experienced pilot forget to check if the actual position of the aircraft matches the waypoints marked by the INS during the flight? Or did the failure of the electrical equipment paralyze the most important navigation systems, lights and radio transmitters? The likelihood of such a development of events is extremely small. Each of the three blocks of the INS had an autonomous power supply. The lights were kept running by any one of four electrical generators, one for each aircraft jet engine. Until the fatal explosion, the crew did not lose contact with ground stations tracking located along the route.

Commander Chong, in his last radio contact with Tokyo, confidently reported that he was 181 km southeast of Japanese island Hokkaido. In fact, he was exactly 181 km north of the island. Why didn't the air traffic controllers tell him about the mistake? Did it purposefully fly over the closed Soviet territory in order to reduce the consumption of expensive fuel for its economical owners? He was already flying along the Romeo-20 route, in close proximity to Soviet territory. Crews usually used weather radar to make sure they didn't cross the border. Documents show that never before during a regular flight did the liner deviate from the approved flight plan. In addition, the South Koreans knew better than anyone about the risk associated with a deviation from the course. In 1978, the Soviet military fired on a Korean airliner that had gone astray and forced it to land. The Boeing 707 then lost control and descended nearly 10,000 meters before it was able to level off and land in the Arctic Circle, on a frozen lake near Murmansk. Two passengers died; the survivors, including 13 wounded, were rescued. The Soviet side billed the South Korean government "for services" - 100 thousand dollars.

Experts tried to answer the question why did the Korean Boeing stray off course? As a result of calculations performed after simulating flight conditions on a Boeing mechanical test bench at a plant in Seattle, the following explanation appeared. When the commander of the airliner, Chon, took off from Anchorage, he did not check the pre-programmed flight path with the INS system, because the high-frequency radio beacon of the Alaskan airport was temporarily turned off for preventive maintenance. Relying on his compass during takeoff, the pilot set a heading of 246 along it. The deviation from the prescribed route of Romeo-20 in this case would be 9 degrees by compass. If the crew commander continued on this course and did not switch to the INS, his mistake, coupled with the wind speed in the upper atmosphere, could bring KAL-007 directly under the missiles of the vigilant Soviet interceptor fighters.

Despite the formidable accusations and counter-accusations of diplomats and politicians, no one wanted the incident to escalate into a confrontation between the great powers. President Reagan spoke of a "crime against humanity," but US responses, such as asking other countries to stop air travel to the Soviet Union for two months, were measured. Eleven Western states have agreed to sanctions that are not so long. The death of innocent civilians is a tragedy, but the world community seemed to agree that revenge or punishment should not prevent the development of relationships that could save millions of lives. Even the publication of the facts about the destruction of KAL-007 did not prevent the Soviet and American representatives in Geneva from continuing active negotiations on a draft agreement on nuclear weapons. According to Reagan, the US approach was to "demonstrate resentment while continuing negotiations."

The Soviet side bent its own: this entire operation with a civilian Boeing was organized by the American special services. It was attended by the services of the air force, naval, ground and even space forces of American intelligence. The same questions were asked: how could an aircraft equipped with first-class navigation aids deviate from the route by more than 500 km? Why didn't the crew of the Boeing 747 correct the course when they entered the Kamchatka zone, although they knew for sure that their route all the way to Japan passed over the ocean? For what reason did the plane not just wander helplessly for two and a half hours in the airspace of the Soviet Union, but maneuver accurately enough to be over the most important strategic objects? Finally, why didn't the ground services responsible for the New York-Seoul highway take any measures to return the car to a long-verified, worked-out course; did not notify the Soviet authorities about the allegedly "lost" plane?

Many drew attention to the fact that this flight was not accidentally carried out as part of a crew almost doubled in number of people, but was led by the former personal pilot of the Seoul dictator, Colonel of the South Korean Air Force Chon Byung-in. Here is what The New York Times wrote about him: “The commander of Flight 007, Jung Byung-in (45), retired from active duty with the rank of Colonel of the Air Force in 1971. The following year, 1972, he joined the South Korean company Korien Airlines. He is an experienced pilot with 10,627 hours of flight time under his belt (including 6,618 hours on a Boeing 747). On the Pacific route, the R-20 worked for more than five years; in 1982 he was awarded for trouble-free work. In other words, this is the ace of the South Korean Air Force. Therefore, it is simply meaningless to claim that he was “distracted” by something during the flight.

Each stage of the actions of the intruder perfectly coincided with the appearance in the given zone of the Ferret-D spy satellite. When the Boeing left the international corridor, Ferret-D listened to Soviet electronic equipment in Chukotka and Kamchatka, which were operating in the usual mode of combat duty. On its next turn, the Ferret-D ended up over Kamchatka at the very moment when the intruder aircraft passed over the strategic facilities of the southern part of the peninsula and recorded an increase in the intensity of the work of Soviet radar facilities. And the third orbit of the spy satellite coincided with the flight of the Boeing over Sakhalin and allowed him to monitor the work of additionally included air defense systems on Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

Japanese journalist Akio Takahashi noted: “... all the time that Soviet fighter-interceptors were chasing an intruder in the Sakhalin sky, at the radio interception stations of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Air Force in Wakkanai and Nemuro, dispatchers on duty did not take their eyes off the radar screens. They received comprehensive information about the course of the flight of the South Korean Boeing-747.

A gigantic antenna system at the American Misawa base in Aomori Prefecture also intercepted the content of the radio communications of Soviet fighters with the air defense command post. The radio interception facilities of the US Navy in Kamisetani, in the suburbs of Yokohama, worked at maximum load, which immediately sent the information received to the Agency national security(NSA) USA. The electronic intelligence data received from the American RC-135 aircraft was also sent there. The NSA, in turn, reported every minute to the "situation room" in the White House on the progress of the operation with the South Korean aircraft.

The mysterious unwillingness of the crew of the liner, flying over special control points, to report their coordinates to the ground (a gross violation of the flight rules) is puzzling.

The American administration never gave an explanation for the actions of several US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft that were in close proximity to the Soviet borders on the night of September 1. Moreover, one of them - RC-135 - was accompanied by a South Korean Boeing for some time. If the plane "accidentally deviated from the course", why did the Americans not warn the crew about this, the English scientist R. Johnson asked.

There was information that the Boeing pilots were hired by the American special services for a large sum. Evidence of this was brought by lawyers Melvin Balai and Charles Harman, representing the interests of the families of the crew of the liner. According to them, the widows of the Boeing commander and his assistant said that their husbands were promised a substantial sum in dollars if they violated the USSR air border and flew over Soviet territory. A secret agreement has been reached between the South Korean airline and American intelligence in advance on this matter. The pilots were forced to agree to carry out a spy operation.

“My husband did not hide his fear of this flight,” said the commander's widow, Cheon Yi Zhi. - Two days before the flight, he became even more nervous and insured his life for a large sum in favor of the family. “I really don’t want to fly - it’s very dangerous,” he said to me in parting.

Immediately after the crash of the liner, an intensive search began for the “black box”, which contains records of flight parameters and crew conversations. The battery-operated "black box" radio beacon, although designed to transmit a signal even from a depth of 6000 m, would be discharged in a month. With a fully charged battery, it can be heard from anywhere within a five-mile radius.

In that hectic atmosphere, according to reports from the American aircraft carrier Sturtet, it was only by pure chance that a collision of ships on the high seas west of Sakhalin was avoided. As a result, both "black boxes" ended up in the hands of the Soviet secret services.

The recorder recorded the last 30 minutes of the flight. The decoded conversations of the Boeing crew did not lift the veil of secrecy over this more than strange incident. So it remained unclear why the plane ended up 600 km from the Anchorage-Seoul flight route assigned to it.

An analysis of the decoding of the readings of the "black box" indicates that the flight of the aircraft lasted 5 hours 26 minutes 18 seconds. From the 4th minute 18th second and an altitude of 1450 m, the flight was carried out using the autopilot, in the mode of automatic stabilization of the magnetic heading of approximately 246 degrees, without connecting inertial systems to the autopilot during the entire flight (the main mode of flight over the ocean is automatic control from inertial systems). The flight altitude was successively 9450, 10050 and 10650 m, and the airspeed was 910-920 km/h. Throughout the flight, the inertial systems were in working condition; the crew, using their testimony, regularly reported to ground control points (mainly via the KAL-015 aircraft) on the estimated and allegedly actual time of flight of the turn points of the route located on the international route, on the direction and speed of the wind, the remaining fuel, which prepared in advance an irrefutable , from the crew's point of view, an alibi. Even during decompression ( emergency situation after the missiles hit - at 06:24:56 on September 1, Sakhalin time and 22:24:56 on August 31, Moscow time), the crew did not give out any intentional nature of the deviation from the route (in the last section, the distance from the international route was up to 660 km, while the actual track line aircraft in the areas of Kamchatka and Sakhalin, according to the emergency recorder, basically coincides with the posting of the USSR Air Defense Forces).

On December 8, 1992, experts from South Korea, Japan, the USA, Russia and ICAO began joint work in Moscow to study the records of flight recorders. One of the first steps of the Russian commission was a trip to Sakhalin Island in order to find traces of personal belongings and documents of dead passengers lifted from the seabed (a lot of such items were raised). Members of the commission managed to find witnesses, and then the place of burial of pieces of aircraft skin, some sneakers, jackets, cameras, tape recorders, books, documents. All this was thrown into a large silo pit at a "closed" point on the island and set on fire; while using two barrels of diesel fuel.

On January 10, 1993, as part of the work of the international commission, the representative of Russia - the chairman of the Russian state commission to investigate the death of the Boeing, Yuri Petrov - handed over the entire package of documents related to the tragedy to ICAO Secretary General Philippe Rocha in Paris.

At the same time, in Ottawa (Canada), an expert group was transcribing the records submitted by Japanese side. On June 14, 1993, the ICAO Council published a multi-page report on the results of an investigation into the circumstances of the tragedy. In the "Conclusions" section, it is noted:

3.12. The flight crew of KAL-007 did not follow the proper navigational procedures that ensure that the aircraft maintains a given track during the entire flight. (No evidence was found to indicate that the flight crew was aware of the deviation from the planned route, even though the deviation occurred for five hours. During this time, the autopilot was used for control, while the flight plan required change magnetic course 9 times ICAO experts suggested that, apparently, the members of the Boeing crew, who in the previous few weeks had to fly a lot and intensively, crossing time zones several times with huge time differences, attention, concentration, the ability to adequately assess the situation is weakened. Routine operations - like checking the readings of various instruments that "hold" the route - seemed to them not very necessary. The crew relied entirely on the autopilot. The crew also did not know about the presence of interceptor fighters. The autopilot was turned off only after like the Boeing was already shot down.)

3.19. According to US officials, the military radar posts in Alaska were not aware in real time that the aircraft was heading west with an increasing deviation to the north (that is, KAL-007 passed through the US air defense identification zone without special permission ...).

3.32. The Soviet Air Defense Command concluded that KAL-007 was a US RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft before ordering its destruction. The Soviet side did not make exhaustive efforts to identify the aircraft, although there were doubts about its ownership and type.

3.33. The military radar posts of the Japanese defense department had information that some kind of aircraft was flying into the airspace of the USSR over Sakhalin Island. According to the Japanese representatives, they did not know that this was a civilian aircraft that deviated from the assigned track (KAL-007 was detected by the Japan Self-Defense Forces radar stations 14 minutes before the death, with the secondary responder code 1300, and not 2000, as expected. This circumstance did not allow the Japanese air defense to identify KAL-007 in a timely manner).

In fact, no one is presented in the report as the main culprit of what happened. It remains a mystery what happened to the bodies of the passengers. This issue was not considered in detail by ICAO experts, although ICAO specialists have no doubt that it was really shot down passenger airliner. The specialists of the French Bureau of Investigation found that the recordings of conversations on board the liner (both between crew members and announcements of crew members to passengers) are “primary sources of negotiations”, that is, this is not an imitation of negotiations using a pre-made magnetic recording. It has even been established that the co-pilot reported while wearing an oxygen mask. Therefore, the ICAO commission has no doubts about the presence of the crew and passengers on board. In addition, divers recovered fragments of human tissues and skin, which were then examined at the Forensic Medicine Center.

The ICAO investigation made it possible to answer one very important question - how many minutes the plane crashed. One of the conclusions of the report states that Osipovich's report about two missiles hitting a Boeing is erroneous. In particular, more than a minute after the attack, radio signals were sent from KAL-007 using high-frequency radio station number one, the antenna of which is located exactly at the end of the left wing plane (which means that the wing was not cut in half by a rocket explosion). None of the Boeing's engines were likely damaged. Twice the flight engineer of the downed aircraft noted - this can be heard on the tape recording of one of the "black boxes" - that the engines are functioning normally. Most likely, only one missile hit the Boeing, which had a radar homing head, which was supposed to explode at a distance of 50 m from the target, damaging primarily the aircraft control system.

Immediately after the attack, the Boeing began to climb and in 40 seconds rose more than a kilometer - from 35,000 feet to 38,250 feet. And only then began to decline, but not to fall, but, in fact, to plan (the vertical rate of descent at that moment was 12,000 feet per minute), albeit at an increasing speed, in a spiral.

The last time KAL-007 was recorded by radar at an altitude of 5000 m nine minutes after it was knocked out by the Su-15. Then radar contact was lost. By that time, both recorders were already out of order. ICAO experts could not answer this question, but stated that at that moment - at 104 seconds after the attack - the Boeing was at an altitude of 33,850 feet, had airspeed 282 knots and a vertical rate of descent of about 5,000 fpm. The slowdown in the rate of descent could mean that the aircraft was amenable to some control by the pilots. Thus, the time of the fall of the Boeing was at least 9 minutes, and possibly even 12 minutes. During this time, most passengers probably managed to fulfill all the commands of the crew: fasten their seat belts, put on oxygen masks. However, not a single body of the passenger was found.

In 1997, a former high-ranking Japanese military intelligence official claimed that a South Korean Boeing 747 was on a mission for American intelligence. The details of this event are set out in the book “The Truth About the KAL-007 Flight,” written by retired officer Yoshiro Tanaka, who until his retirement led the electronic listening of Soviet military installations from a tracking station in Wakkanai, in the very north of Hokkaido. It was this object, by the way, that recorded the negotiations of Soviet pilots pursuing a South Korean plane on the night of August 31 to September 1, 1983.

Tanaka based his claims on an analysis of data on the extremely strange route of the liner, as well as on information provided by Russia to ICAO in 1991 about Soviet radio communications in connection with this incident. As a result of his own research, a former Japanese intelligence officer came to the conclusion that the American intelligence services deliberately sent a South Korean passenger plane into Soviet airspace in order to cause a stir in the Soviet air defense system and reveal its classified and usually silent installations. According to Tanaka, the United States at that time made every effort to collect information about Soviet air defense in the Far East, which in 1982 was modernized and significantly strengthened. American reconnaissance aircraft had previously regularly violated Soviet airspace in the area where the South Korean Boeing 747 crashed, but they could fly there only for a very short time. That is why, the Japanese expert believed, a passenger liner was chosen for the operation, which, according to the US intelligence services, could fly over Soviet air defense facilities for a long time and with impunity.

There are also seemingly incredible versions of this catastrophe. According to one of them, the border was violated by an unmanned Boeing - a double that simulated the flight of the KAL-007 flight. And the passenger Boeing was destroyed on its international route at the direction of US CIA Director William Casey.

"That day is indeed in midair Far East three planes were shot down, says Vladimir Podberezny, former deputy ICAO representative in Montreal, who took part in the investigation into the circumstances of the death South Korean aircraft. - The reconnaissance aircraft was the first to suffer, most likely the P-3 Orion. This happened 10-12 minutes before the destruction of the unmanned Boeing by the Su-15 pilot Osipovich. The destruction of the reconnaissance aircraft was not part of the "air operation" plans. As they say, a coincidence: on the “screen” of the Su-15 radar sight, the mark of the reconnaissance was closer than that of the unmanned Boeing. The second - at 6.24.56 (Sakhalin time) - an unmanned (empty) Boeing was destroyed (blown up). After 4 minutes (06.28.49) it exploded on its international airway "Boeing" flight KAL-007. Its first fragments were found 8 days later off the coast of Hokkaido, north of Honshu.

All three aircraft were destroyed over international waters. On the morning of September 1, 1983, on the desk of the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal N. Ogarkov, preliminary combat reports (ciphers) from three commanders-in-chief: the Air Defense Forces, the Air Force and the Far Eastern Military District lay down on the table. Reports testified: pilot Gennady Osipovich shot down a US reconnaissance aircraft in neutral waters.

In the evening, in the Vremya program on Central Television, Marshal Ogarkov, then in a TASS statement, only a half-truth was reported, Podberezny believes. Allegedly, after warning shots with tracer shells fired by a Soviet pilot, the intruder left the airspace of the USSR. Then, for ten minutes, he was observed by radar means, and later left the observation zone. That is, his flight by the Su-15 fighter was not stopped. Marshal Ogarkov could not tell the world the other part of the truth that a Soviet fighter shot down an American reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace - this would cause a worldwide scandal. After all, there is a gross violation of international law.

After 5-6 days, when Marshal S. Akhromeev had a "black box" (a voice recorder from the South Korean flight KAL-007) in the hands of Marshal S. Akhromeev, the version of the incident changed dramatically. According to it, the intruder that left the airspace of the USSR was destroyed by a Su-15 fighter. The new statement even voiced the responsibility of the Soviet state for the destruction of the passenger aircraft.

Four days later, the pilot Osipovich was transferred to continue his service in Armavir. However, first he appears in Moscow, at the General Staff, for a "conversation". He is accused of disrupting the combat mission of destroying the intruder aircraft. And it really is. But the high officials of the General Staff “pardoned” the pilot, “advising” him in a television interview to “retarget” the missiles from the US reconnaissance aircraft to the South Korean Boeing, which he did not shoot down and could not shoot down. For "exemplary" behavior - in front of a TV camera - he was given a bonus of 192 rubles. By the way, Osipovich's further military service did not work out - he retired from the army. It is curious that none of the commissions investigating the incident involved him in their work. Two official ICAO reports say that its specialists "failed" to meet with Osipovich.

“Is there evidence of two Boeings? According to Podberezny, the voice recorder and the recorder of flight parameters, which were studied in the USSR, Russia and ICAO, were not actually from a South Korean Boeing, but from two different aircraft.

The remains of the passengers of the South Korean Boeing (flight KAL-007), which carried out its entire flight along the international air route R-20 (which is confirmed by the decoded speech recorder), are at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, east of Hokkaido. Soviet divers-experts determined with a high probability: judging by the absence of passengers, and by other parameters, the remains of the “Boeing” “destroyed” by Osipovich did not belong to the South Korean flight.

Meanwhile, the US reconnaissance aircraft, flying along the R-20 international airway, intercepted and recorded all the communications of the KAL-007 crew with the Anchorage and Japanese air traffic control services, with other crews, organizing temporary radio interference to communication lines. The goal is to create the appearance of the aircraft deviating from the track. Thus, a second "black box" (speech recorder) appeared in parallel. No, not a copy - it was he who, 5-6 days after the incident, somehow ended up with Marshal S. Akhromeev.

E-3A, carrying W. Casey, took off from one of the US air bases in Alaska on the evening of August 31 (Kamchatka time). Discovered at 23.45 800 km from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, at an altitude of 8000 m by radio engineering troops. Judging by the message of Marshal Ogarkov at a press conference, presumably this is an RC-135. After the discovery, the aircraft made a "strange" loitering. After some time, two or three more reconnaissance aircraft took off from the same base.

Two Boeing 747s took off from the Anchorage airfield. One of them, the Boeing-747-200B, is an unmanned twin of the South Korean one, simulating its flight as an intruder of Soviet airspace. The double and E-3A approached and walked together for 10 minutes. Then they split up. E-3A turned to the southeast, towards the international route, with a decrease in altitude, trying to get out of the zone of visibility of the radio engineering troops of the USSR air defense. The unmanned Boeing (without passengers, but stuffed with suitcases, various clothes - men's, women's, children's) went along the already known route of violation.

10 minutes after leaving the airspace of the USSR, the unmanned Boeing was destroyed (exploded) according to a pre-set program or remotely via radio from an E-3A aircraft. For 10 minutes of observation, the aircraft could travel 150 km at a speed of 900 km / h, but this distance did not pass, therefore, it turned around so as not to go far from the airspace of the USSR.

At this time, the second Boeing-747-230B (flight KAL-007) on autopilot was flying along the international route R-20, from which it did not deviate anywhere (if it deviated, then from the conversations between the crew members it could be to install). But they behaved as they should, clearly maintaining the track parameters. No official investigation has so far been able to explain the motives for the cold-blooded behavior of the crew members of the South Korean Boeing.

4 minutes after the destruction of the unmanned Boeing, KAL-007 explodes. Also on the radio, from the E-3A, sums up Podberezny.

In 1993, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) concluded that the Boeing 747 had entered Soviet airspace due to a navigational error and was shot down because it was mistaken for a reconnaissance aircraft. However, many materials on this case, in particular the data of Japanese radio interception, are kept secret.

In a word, there is still no consensus why the crew of the South Korean Boeing went so far into the airspace of the USSR.

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website Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the greatest tragedy in Russian-Korean recent history.

We can safely predict the aggravation of anti-Russian ultra-right sentiments in South Korea, therefore, we recall without technical details about the tragic events of September 1, 1983. This story gave rise to many mysteries, so far not a single body has been found, although everyone has thoroughly searched.

What they wrote and said then:

1. Soviet media version. On September 2, 1983, a strange report was published about an unidentified aircraft flying into Soviet airspace. The Su-15 fighter-interceptors raised on alarm drove him out and he retired towards the Sea of ​​Japan.
2. Soviet media version. On September 4, the newspapers condemned the propaganda hype raised in the West in connection with the alleged downing Soviet fighters by a Boeing 747-230B passenger aircraft owned by the South Korean airline Korean Air and performing a regular flight on the New York-Seoul route. A map of the route is published, and it is conjectured that the plane was on a spy mission.
3. Soviet media version. On September 8, regret is expressed for the loss of life. The fact that there was a tragic mistake and the Soviet air defense took the passenger plane for a reconnaissance aircraft was immediately known to the leadership of the USSR, but no one wanted to substitute the military and the responsibility was placed on the United States. A program of disinformation of the world community began, which caused the largest international scandal.

What happened then:

On September 1 at 3:00 local time, the Boeing 747 took off from Anchorage and headed for Seoul. The flight route was supposed to go around the territory of the USSR to the east of Kamchatka. However, almost from the very beginning of the flight, the plane began to deviate from the intended course.
At the same time, an American reconnaissance aircraft PC-135 was in the air, which for some time approached the Boeing. Radar observation data presented later by the Soviet side showed that the Boeing at a certain point in time approached the PC-135 reconnaissance aircraft so much that the marks on the radar screens merged. After that, one aircraft headed deep into the territory of the USSR, and the other along a route close to the international air route. Soviet air defense radar stations flew the Boeing 747 like an American reconnaissance aircraft, aided by the similar size and design of the aircraft.

The plane passed over Kamchatka, flew over Sakhalin, and was not allowed to fly to Vladivostok.
At 6:26 local time, Lieutenant Colonel Osipovich received an order from the commander of the Far Eastern Military District, General Tretyak, and fired two missiles at the silhouette of an aircraft flying near the very edge of the clouds. One of the rockets flew past, the other exploded near the tail of the liner, damaging the control systems. After 12 minutes, the Boeing falls into the waters of the Tatar Strait, taking with it the lives of 269 passengers and crew members.

According to an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the most likely cause of the flight's 500-kilometer off-course was that the South Korean Boeing's pilots misconfigured the autopilot and then did not perform proper checks to correct the current position. That is, the violation of the airspace of the USSR was unintentional.

Finding out the true background of the events that took place exactly thirty years ago in the night sky over Sakhalin and the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is as difficult as proving and confirming the truth of the American moon landings. In both cases, behind the seeming simplicity and irrefutability of the version stubbornly promoted by the West, something completely different looms...

Meanwhile, it is necessary to understand, despite all the obvious inconsistencies. After all, the incident of 1983 became a convenient pretext for Washington and its allies to unleash another paranoid-hysterical campaign against the USSR, and contributed to the rallying of the anti-communist bloc. President Ronald Reagan found another reason to confirm the thesis he had previously voiced about the USSR as an "evil empire" - a term he borrowed from the film " star Wars". Part of the Soviet elite was so frightened by the Western propaganda attack that two years later they voted with both hands for the coming to power of the favorite of our geopolitical rivals, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Once again, it makes no sense to talk in detail about the events of September 1983: the number of newspaper publications about the downed South Korean Boeing in our country is in the thousands, books have been written and films made about it. Let me just remind you that the most important accusation against us is the disproportionate use of force against a civilian airliner of the South Korean airline Korian Airlines, flying on the first day of autumn 1983, flight 007 New York - Anchorage - Seoul, as a result of which 269 passengers died and crew members.

But to this day, many facts work against the Western version of the "peaceful aircraft." This is a significant deviation of the Boeing from the flight route of more than five hundred kilometers, which began almost immediately after takeoff from Anchorage.

In response, we are told that the pilots simply made a mistake. But how many cases does history know when passenger aircraft with experienced pilots, who had previously flown more than once or twice this route, gone so far aside?

And why didn't the American air traffic control warn the Korean pilots that they were flying on the wrong course?

There is still no clear answer to the question of why the “new” route of flight 007 ran precisely over Kamchatka, the Kuriles and Sakhalin - in other words, areas that had and still have strategic importance for the defense of our country. Again they object: what kind of information could a civilian aircraft collect, if everything is already visible from satellites. Well, firstly, not everything is noticeable from orbit through the veil of the earth's atmosphere, even now. And, secondly, one of the possible goals of a possible invasion of our airspace was to collect data on the organization of Soviet air defense systems, which were forced to work on the intruder.

Another question that has not received a clear answer from the West is the synchronization of the flight of the South Korean aircraft with the American Ferret-D reconnaissance satellite and the American spy plane.

In addition, the incident occurred against the backdrop of ongoing provocations in 1983 by Washington, which became insolent to the point that it even authorized imitation of bombing on one of our military airfields in the Kuriles.

And the main question to which there is no answer: how could the pilots of Corian Airlines not see the Soviet military aircraft that was next to them, which indicated its presence with both swaying wings and warning fire. Moreover, they also tried to leave, taking a higher echelon.

Suspicions are even more intensified when you find out that back in April 1978, another Corian Airlines flight 902, flying from Paris to Seoul through the same Anchorage, also “got lost” and, probably, quite by accident appeared in the sky above our other the most important area - the Kola Peninsula. He was forced to land, after going through the formalities, the passengers were released, the pilots were not punished, but expelled from the Soviet Union. It's pretty good known fact, but few of us know that in 1992, one of the reputable South Korean magazines published an article that contained the confession of the captain of that same Corian Airlines flight in connection with the CIA. It was on the eve of Boris Yeltsin's trip to Seoul, when he handed over the "black boxes" of flight 007 - perhaps no one suggested to him that in connection with the above-mentioned publication it was advisable to postpone such a ceremony for a more detailed study of the issue.

The presence of special services is also very strongly felt in the incident over Sakhalin. Boeing commander Jung Byung-in was once the personal pilot of the South Korean ruler Pak Chung-hee.

Working with the first persons of the state implies a mandatory procedure for passing an audit through the special services, or rather, long-term cooperation with them. However, both then and today, South Korean intelligence cannot be completely independent in its actions - it is in the same team with the Americans. But that's not all. The influential South Korean newspaper Joseon Ilbo then published a message about the landing of the allegedly downed Boeing on Sakhalin, citing CIA data. But it is not customary to spread about such cooperation of journalists with special services, and even foreign ones.

There is also a statement posted on the Internet by an American whose father, a career intelligence officer, did not board flight 007 just ten minutes before departure - on the advice of his colleagues. But the most surprising thing is the writings of Western "writers" who talk about the fact that in fact the Boeing was not shot down, but was only forced to land on the territory of the island administrative-territorial unit of the USSR. To the question about the further fate of the passengers, a simple answer is given: they are kept in the Gulag, because special “secret” camps are still preserved on the territory of Siberia. Cases of phone calls to relatives made by those who should have died thirty years ago are cited as "evidence". For example, an engineer who electronic systems aboard a Korean airliner, unexpectedly called his mother, but only managed to inform him that everything was fine with him, after which he immediately hung up. There were also reports that Boeing passengers were often met by their acquaintances, but the “resurrected” pretended that they had misunderstood.

This means that the version of "informed sources" that in fact, instead of a passenger Boeing, an American reconnaissance aircraft similar to it was shot down has a right to exist. The liner was landed at an American military base in Japan, and all passengers were given new identity cards and good monetary compensation, while being ordered to remain silent. If so, then the Westerners are well aware that sooner or later the awl will come out of the bag, and then a huge scandal is inevitable. To avoid it, fables about the "active Gulag" were launched.

Several others argue that the Boeing incident was well orchestrated. similar cases dated the same year 1983.
The most resonant is the attempt on the life of South Korean dictator-president Chung Doo-hwan during his visit to Burma in early October, which was called in Japanese and South Korean sources as the "Incident at the Tomb of Aung San." Let me briefly remind you: Chung Doo Hwan, according to the protocol, was supposed to visit the mausoleum in honor of the founder of independent Burma in the capital of this state. The president, for some unknown reason, was late, having sent his ambassador to this country to the place of the ceremony in advance. However, there was an explosion near the mausoleum that claimed the lives of about thirty people, including the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Energy. Judging by a photo taken minutes before the incident, representatives of South Korea's top political establishment were lined up waiting for their boss.

After the incident, the Burmese military caught two allegedly North Korean agents, who, as part of a sabotage group, allegedly staged this terrorist act. It seems that everything converges, up to material evidence, there are also captured performers. But why has no one bothered to clearly explain the reason for Jung Doo-hwan being late to memorial cemetery, to explain how North Korean agents could have penetrated the territory of the tomb, which was guarded by about two hundred guards of the South Korean president, not counting the Burmese security forces, and planted two mines of huge explosive power there. And why the North Korean merchant ship, from which the group of saboteurs allegedly landed, was from October 4 to October 11 in the port of Colombo, that is, far from the scene of the incident. And why would Chung Doo-hwan, upon his return to Seoul, not remove either the head of the intelligence service or the head of his own security from their posts. Yes, presumably North Korean agents were caught, but who can guarantee that these are not South Korean intelligence officers who were tasked with impersonating "brothers" from the North? However, the photos of these people so far no one has published. And there was no reason for the North Koreans to "run into" a scandal that resulted in a break in diplomatic relations with Burma, a country with which trade was very profitable for both Pyongyang and Rangoon. Now, decades later, these two countries are again drawn to each other like magnets, on the basis of anti-Western sentiment. However, a year before, the South Koreans claimed that they wanted to kill their leader - it is clear who - in Canada. It already looks like paranoia.

Even more mysterious case occurred in August of the same 1983, when the South Korean warship Kangwon allegedly sank a high-speed North Korean reconnaissance ship in the Sea of ​​Japan. More precisely, this was done by a helicopter taking off from the ship with an ACC-12 missile, which, according to the South Koreans, is designed to fire at ground targets. Strangely, there is no information about the successful use of ACC-12 in the Sea of ​​Japan anywhere else, except in South Korean sources. There are also different versions of what happened. According to one of them, the South Koreans stepped onto the deck of the wrecked ship, according to another, it simply sank, and again not a single photograph. But as evidence, a helicopter was put on public display, the fuselage of which was decorated with the sign of the destroyed enemy warship. "Strong" evidence, of course.

I believe that in the case of the Boeing, the Americans pursued not only the goal of finding out the details of the operation Soviet system air defense, but also wanted to prevent the rapprochement between Seoul and Moscow.

The South Korean dictator, General Pak Chung-hee (president of the country in 1963-1979), apparently, was very burdened by his total dependence on Washington. Therefore, as far as possible, he was looking for "exits" to Moscow. One of the first signs is gratitude to the Soviet leadership for the quick resolution of the issue with the passengers and crew of flight 902, which, I note, was done in the absence of diplomatic relations. This line was continued under the next military ruler, Chung Doo-hwan, when South Korean walkers, who also had American or Japanese citizenship, after receiving a visa, visited our foreign affairs department to persuade us to improve relations with Seoul. After the incident with the Boeing, these visits to the Foreign Ministry ended, a wave of anti-Soviet hysteria swept over South Korea ...