The destruction of the South Korean by Soviet military fighters. "People, of course, sorry, but we acted correctly." What was written and said then

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 his earlier thesis 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 do they know when passenger aircraft with experienced pilots, who had previously flown more than once or twice this route, gone so far aside?

And for what reason the American management services air traffic did not 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 over Kamchatka, the Kuriles and Sakhalin - in other words, areas that were and still are of 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 flight synchronization. South Korean aircraft with the American reconnaissance satellite "Ferret-D" 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 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 was working on electronic systems on board a Korean airliner unexpectedly called his mother, but only had time to report 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 a good monetary compensation while ordering them 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 the photo taken minutes before the incident, representatives of the highest political establishment South Korea 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.

An even more mysterious incident 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 functioning of the Soviet air defense system, but also wanted to prevent Seoul from rapprochement with 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 ...

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 Sea of Japan, off Moneron Island.

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 information about all commercial flights whose routes passed near the border. Therefore, the error is excluded: the pilot knew that he was attacking passenger liner.

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 has violated 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. Then TASS published a statement regarding the “unidentified aircraft”, which “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. Sakhalin Island has a naval center and six air bases 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 at high altitude, could not obtain 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 tracking stations located along the route for a minute.

Commander Chon, in his last radio contact with Tokyo, confidently reported that he was 181 km southeast of the Japanese island of 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 testify that never before during scheduled flight the aircraft did not 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 vigilant missiles Soviet fighters- interceptors.

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 (with the main mode of flight over the ocean - 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. Soviet side no exhaustive efforts were made to identify the aircraft, although doubts remained about its identity 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.

IN last time KAL-007 was detected by radar at an altitude of 5000 m nine minutes after it was shot down by a Su-15. Then radar contact was lost. By that time, both recorders were already out of order. ICAO experts were unable to 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 an airspeed of 282 knots and vertical speed about 5000 feet per minute. 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 of the South Korean plane. - 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 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 plane.

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 the island 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 Organization civil aviation(ICAO) concluded that the Boeing 747 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.

Korean Boeing 747 shot down over Sakhalin

September 1, 1983; regular 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).

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.

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 those of the United States and other Western countries, must distinguish between 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:

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.

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 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.

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

For two days, representatives of the Soviet Union did not give any comments. TASS then released a statement regarding an "unidentified aircraft" that "grossly violated the state border and entered deep 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.

Despite the harsh weather conditions 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 a 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.

Commander Chon, in his last radio contact with Tokyo, confidently reported that he was 181 km southeast of the Japanese island of 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.

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 US National Security Agency (NSA). 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.

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 at the time of decompression (an emergency after a missile hit - at 06:24:56 on September 1, Sakhalin time and 22:24:56 on August 31, Moscow time), the crew did not betray the intentional nature of the deviation from the route (on the last leg, the distance from the international route was up to 660 km, while the actual path of the aircraft in the areas of Kamchatka and Sakhalin, according to the emergency recorder, basically coincides with the posting of the USSR Air Defense Forces).

At the same time, in Ottawa (Canada), an expert group deciphered the records submitted by the 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:

3.32. 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.

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 experts have no doubt that it was indeed a passenger airliner that was shot down. 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 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 were unable to 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 an airspeed of 282 knots and a vertical rate of descent of about 5,000 feet per minute. 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 of the passengers, probably, managed to fulfill all the commands of the crew: they fastened their seat belts, put on oxygen masks. However, not a single body of the passenger was found.

“On that day, three aircraft were actually shot down in the airspace of the Far East,” says Vladimir Podberezny, a former deputy ICAO representative in Montreal, who took part in the investigation into the death of a 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.

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.

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.

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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Since death 269 people who were on board this aircraft, more than 30 years have passed. However, the circumstances of the tragic event have not only not been clarified since then, but rather, on the contrary, have become even more mysterious.

Boeing 747-230V Korean Air lines

At dawn on September 1, 1983, the telephone rang in the apartment of the commander of the Far Eastern Military District, Hero of the Soviet Union, General of the Army I.M. Tretyak. The chief of staff of the district was in touch, who reported to the commander that a foreign aircraft had invaded the airspace of the USSR in the Kamchatka region.

The general later recalled:

“He flew on an unusual route. This alarmed us. Parts of OSNAZ established that a radiogram was being transmitted from the aircraft to the satellite. Having deciphered it, we learned that the crew was reporting on the successful completion of the task of monitoring our submarines in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Based on this situation, I was forced to report this to the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal of the Soviet Union N.V. Ogarkov, who gave the command to force the plane to land, and if it does not comply with our commands, destroy it.

Interceptors were raised into the air. The pilot of one of them, lieutenant colonel Gennady Osipovich on orders from the ground hit the target with two missiles.

Before that, he fired several warning bursts (about 200 rounds) from a 23-millimeter airborne cannon in the direction of the airliner.

Gennady Nikolaevich Osipovich

Until the moment Osipovich made visual contact with the intruder, the Soviet military command was sure that it was dealing with the American reconnaissance aircraft PC-135. The pilot had doubts only at the moment of the attack:

“At a distance of five kilometers from the target, I received a command to destroy and fired the first rocket. Only at that distance could I really see the intruder. It was larger than the Il-76, and in outline it was somewhat reminiscent of the Tu-16. I knew all the enemy warplanes, all the reconnaissance markings, this one was like none of them. I saw that in front of me was a large plane with lights and flashing lights on.

The liner, which crashed into the water off Moneron Island southeast of Sakhalin, turned out to be a passenger Boeing 747 deviated by almost 600 miles from the course. It belonged to the South Korean company KAL and operated flight 007 on the route New York - Anchorage (Alaska) - Seoul. There were 269 passengers and 29 crew members on board.

Today, 33 years after the tragedy, there is no clear answer to the question of what actually happened in the sky over Sakhalin. According to some journalists who tried to conduct an independent investigation, the blame for the death of the passenger "Boeing" lies with the South Korean authorities, who authorized his participation in the intelligence operation.

Planned and real routes flight 007

The American magazine Science Defense Store wrote:

“This aircraft, shortly before the incident - August 11-14, 1983, visited Andrews Air Force Base, where it was equipped with special equipment. This operation was attended not only by representatives of the National Security Agency and the CIA, but also by specialists from the US Air Force intelligence agency, the National Intelligence Agency and other departments.

Apparently, the need to maintain this special equipment explains the fact that the Boeing crew had a non-standard number - for no apparent reason, it was increased by 11 people. A 40-minute hitch with a departure from the airport in Anchorage also speaks in favor of the version of the KAL-007 spy mission.

This "unforeseen" delay allowed the liner to be near the border of the USSR at the very moment when the American reconnaissance satellite Ferret-D was orbiting Kamchatka.

Immediately after the disaster in Anchorage, a draft plan for the flight to Seoul of flight 007 was discovered, from which the unequivocal conclusion followed that the deviation of the Boeing from the route was not accidental and that the ship's commander carefully prepared for it. Radio communication between the Alaska air traffic control service and the South Korean airliner, according to the American side, was interrupted immediately after takeoff due to the simultaneous failure of all five on-board radio transmitters.

However, as soon as the plane was in the area of responsibility of the Tokyo airport, the radio traffic was suddenly restored, and until the moment of death, the co-pilot got in touch with the controller at least twenty times. But the strangest thing is that, once over Sakhalin, the passenger liner answered the automatic interrogation of Japanese radars with signals that identified it as an American reconnaissance aircraft PC-135.

A lot of other facts speak in favor of the participation of a civilian Boeing in the operation of the American special services. Yoshiro Tanaka, a retired Japanese military intelligence officer, wrote about this in the book The Truth About the KAL-007 Flight. The passenger plane, according to him, deliberately entered the airspace of the USSR in order to open the air defense system of the Far Eastern Military District.

This provocation allowed American electronic intelligence not only to verify that the intruder had been shot down, but also to fix the location of Soviet radar posts, clarify operating frequencies and record all military telephone and radio communications.

Recordings of these interceptions were later published in all American newspapers. But the flight plan of the US Navy reconnaissance aircraft, which was close to the event area, as well as data on radar surveillance of it, have not yet been made public.

most interesting version events of September 1, 1983 was put forward by the French expert Michel Brun. In his opinion, the South Korean liner was not shot down by Lieutenant Colonel Osipovich near Sakhalin, but crashed not far from Japanese city Niigata. This was confirmed by the original copy of the Boeing 747 conversations received by Brun, from the analysis of which it followed that the plane was in the air for another 40 minutes after the crash.

According to the journalist, the Soviet and American authorities, by mutual agreement, concealed the fact that an explosion occurred over the territory of the USSR. air battle which resulted in the shooting down of three US Navy aircraft.

In support of his version, Brun pointed out that some of the fragments washed up by the sea on the Japanese coast turned out to be the wreckage not of a passenger Boeing, but of military aircraft. Among them was a piece of a rectangular leading edge flap that could only belong to an American F-111 or EF-111 fighter. Another fragment found - the seat of the pilot's catapult - could also belong only to a US military aircraft. In addition, parts of a military missile with English markings washed up on the shore.

Brun became interested in the direction sea currents in this area and established that the wreckage of the Boeing shot down off Sakhalin could not have ended up near Hokkaido in nine days across the current and against the prevailing winds. According to the French expert, the passenger airliner was indeed hit by two Soviet fighter missiles, but continued to pull towards the Japanese coast and was finished off by someone 50 minutes after its "death".

Like it or not, but there is documentary evidence that on September 1, 1983, a special US Navy aircraft, usually used in rescue operations, was sent to a specific square in the Sea of Japan.

It is noteworthy that at the official crash site of the South Korean Boeing, Soviet divers were unable to find almost any human remains. In addition, not a single burnt thing was found, but there were plenty of things “from the garbage”: broken powder boxes, old torn clothes.

Lieutenant Colonel Osipovich, many years after the tragedy, told reporters:

“We found fragments of several bodies. As if there were 17 people on the plane. At first they said that the bodies could be eaten by fish and crustaceans. But this is simply impossible - there should have been 269 people there! At the bottom they found passports tied in a pile, tied sneakers. Do you ever put passengers' passports together on planes? Salon just filled with trash.

I believe that there were two Boeings. One - empty - went to Kamchatka, then to Sakhalin, and then I shot him down. And the passenger plane went on its own course and even then got in touch with the Japanese. But he got busted too. You can't veer nearly 600 miles off course on a plane like a Boeing. This mistake should have been noticed by both the crew and ground services.

The absence of bodies is one of the main mysteries, which can have two explanations. First on board this aircraft there were only military specialists, but what about the fact that flight KAL-007 took off from Anchorage with passengers? Secondly, experienced pilots managed to land the Boeing, and people were evacuated. This assumption formed the basis of another version of events.

According to her, the passenger plane really participated in the American intelligence operation, which its passengers did not even suspect. After the launch of the missiles by Osipovich, the Boeing did not immediately crash into the ocean, but for some time was in the air and continued to communicate with the earth.

Then he produced forced landing onto the water, the Americans secretly evacuated the crew and passengers, and the Soviet military was promptly planted with a pre-prepared "trick": rags, small fragments of a passenger plane, several fragments of corpses from the morgue. And then the propaganda machine of the US State Department joined in, accusing the "evil empire" - the USSR - of "cold-blooded destruction of an innocent civil aircraft».

Memorial to Flight 007 ("Prayer Tower" at Cape Soya in Japan)

Marking the anniversary of the tragedy, on September 1, 2003, the British radio company BBC acknowledged that there are still many mysteries in the history of the South Korean Boeing:

“Hence, there are more and more reports that after the missile attack the plane did not lose control at all and the pilots controlled it for at least another 12 minutes. In theory, this time is quite enough for an emergency landing - there would be an airfield. The representative of the International Committee for the Rescue of the Victims of Flight KAL-007, Ben Torrey, is almost sure: such an airfield near the site of the tragedy was ...

That morning, a plane landed near Moneron Island. Ben Torrey and his supporters are sure that this plane was the same Korean "Boeing". According to him, the passengers of the flight were removed from the board of the liner and taken away in an unknown direction, and the car itself was blown up, then spreading fragments on the seabed.”

35 years ago, one of the major disasters in the history of world aviation. Soviet systems Air defenses mistakenly shot down a Korean Air Lines (KAL) aircraft in the sky over Sakhalin, flying from New York to Seoul with a stop in Anchorage. The tragedy claimed the lives of 269 people - 23 crew members and 246 passengers. The death of flight KE007 caused a wide resonance throughout the world, especially in the USA and Korea, and led to a significant deterioration in relations between the USSR and the West.

Similar case(with the only difference that by a happy coincidence, mass casualties were avoided) happened to the KAL board five years earlier. On April 20, 1978, Soviet fighter-interceptors attacked a flight with the message Paris - Anchorage - Seoul. For unknown reasons, the ship significantly deviated from the assigned route and violated the Soviet-Finnish border in the area Kola Peninsula. Aggression against a civilian aircraft, which was mistaken for a reconnaissance aircraft, resulted in damage to the wing. However, the pilot managed to make an emergency landing on the ice of the frozen lake Korpijärvi in the remote Karelian taiga.

As a result of the incident, two people were killed and 13 others were injured.

The surviving 107 passengers and 12 crew members were soon released, and the USSR issued an invoice to Korea in the amount of $100,000: the maintenance of uninvited guests allegedly cost this amount. KAL refused to take the damaged side due to the high cost of transportation, and it was written off for scrap.

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Beginning in 1950, the Soviet military repeatedly attacked or forced to land foreign reconnaissance and military aircraft that accidentally or deliberately intruded into the country's airspace. On August 4, 1961, fire was opened on an Iran Air plane flying from Beirut to Tehran. And at that time, the pilots managed to save the ship from danger, and then successfully land it on the southwestern coast of the Caspian Sea.

Compared to the period when the emergency occurred with the first Korean Boeing, by the time of the attack on the second, the geopolitical situation on the planet had changed significantly. The détente of international tensions of the era of the Soviet General Secretary and the American President was replaced by a new sharp round of the Cold War. In 1983, the USSR was headed by a reactionary, and the United States was headed by a famous uncompromising attitude towards the communist system. In March, he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."

In the new realities, the US military has significantly increased intelligence (from the position of the USSR - espionage, illegal) activity in the Far East.

Mutual provocations took place in the Sea of Okhotsk. The United States was particularly interested in the secret strategic facilities of Kamchatka and Sakhalin.

The situation was escalated to the limit by the incident on April 4 of the same year, when six American attack aircraft invaded the USSR for several tens of kilometers and carried out simulated bombing on the territory of Zeleny Island in the area small ridge Kuril Islands. They took this case as a painful flick on the nose, arranging a scolding for the commander of the local air defense, who did not stop the impudent aliens.

In fact, Zeleny's mock attack doomed any intruder to big trouble: a pilot's mistake or a forced violation of the USSR air border now threatened with the most severe consequences. It so happened that the civilian flight KE007 fell under the distribution, the pilots of which were not going to play cat and mouse with Soviet fighters, but became victims of circumstances.

Wikimedia/USAF Planned and actual routes for US Air Force flight KE007 / Boeing RC-135, which was mistaken for flight KE007

Between New York and Seoul - more than 11 thousand kilometers: this is one of the most long routes between the two capitals. Under modern conditions, the flight takes 14.5 hours.

The Boeing took off from the airport according to the regular schedule, and on the night of September 1, it landed as planned in Anchorage (Alaska) for refueling and rest of the pilots. At about three o'clock local time, the board headed for Seoul. According to the rules, the flight had to take place outside the territory of the USSR. It was assumed that the aircraft would circle Kamchatka, and then the Kuril Islands from the south and, flying over northern part the Japanese island of Honshu, will soon reach the South Korean capital.

However, from the very first minutes of the flight, for unknown reasons, the board began to deviate from the intended course. At some point, a US Air Force reconnaissance Boeing approached KE007. The marks on the Soviet radar screens merged, after which one ship entered the space of the USSR, and the other returned to the international air route.

It is believed that Soviet observers could confuse aircraft of similar size and modifications, mistaking a civilian airliner for an enemy spy plane.

A transcript of the conversations of KE007 personnel before the tragedy is available on the Aviation Safety Network portal, which tracks aviation accidents. It is clear from the transcript that initially the flight proceeded calmly, no different from hundreds of similar routine flights. The commander of the crew and the pilots did not show the slightest sign of alarm. At the seventh minute of the route, it was announced on the speakerphone in the cabin that it was now three in the morning in Seoul, and the entire flight would also be approximately three hours. Before landing, passengers were promised drinks and breakfast as standard.

The peaceful course of the flight was violated by Soviet fighters, which were raised on command from the Yelizovo airfield near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, when the Korean Boeing unexpectedly turned up over the Kamchatka Peninsula, flying just north of the city itself. The deviation from the course was at that moment more than 300 km.

To return to flight schedule, KE007 pilots needed to take a sharp course south and reach Japan. However, they continued flying in a southwestern direction, and soon again violated the Soviet air border over Sakhalin. The deviation now reached 500 km, which was interpreted by the military of the USSR as a grave crime.

In this situation, the commander of the 40th Fighter Division in the Far East, Anatoly Kornukov, ordered the destruction of the Boeing. In 1998-2002, he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force. Repeatedly talking about the decision taken then throughout his life, Kornukov always emphasized that he was based on the norms of international and Soviet law, considering the flight of the Korean aircraft a provocation by the Americans. The army general passed away in 2014.

The direct executor of the order was Major Gennady Osipovich on the Su-15. He fired warning shots that the Boeing pilots might not have noticed. At the same time, the officer did not try to contact the Korean pilots by radio and could not identify the intruder.

Osipovich fired two missiles at the target. One passed by, the other exploded near the tail. The plane went into a spiral and 12 minutes after the attack crashed into the La Perouse Strait 37 km southwest of Sakhalin, crashing into the water.

“On the night of August 31 to September 1, an aircraft of unidentified affiliation from the Pacific Ocean entered the airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula, then again violated the airspace of the USSR over about. Sakhalin. At the same time, the aircraft flew without air navigation lights, did not respond to requests, and did not enter into communication with the radio control service.

Air defense fighters raised towards the intruder tried to assist in bringing it to the nearest airfield. However, the intruder did not react to the signals and warnings of the Soviet fighters and continued flying towards the Sea of Japan, ”this is how he presented what happened off the coast of Sakhalin.

The reaction to the death of the Boeing was anti-Soviet actions in the United States (62 victims, including Senator Lawrence McDonald) and Korea (82 passengers and 23 crew members). People staged protest marches and burned the flags of the USSR. With withering criticism of the Soviet Union, President Reagan called the incident "a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten," as well as "an act of barbarism and inhuman cruelty." The reputation of the USSR suffered enormous damage.

A week later, on September 9, the USSR Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs held a press conference for domestic and foreign journalists. During the meeting, the chief, with a pointer in his hands, argued on the flight diagram and the map of the tragedy area that the Korean Boeing was in fact not a civilian aircraft, but a reconnaissance aircraft.

Cheredintsev Valentin/Photochronicle TASS USSR. Moscow. September 1, 1983 Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov during a press conference

“It has been irrefutably proven that the intrusion of a South Korean airline into Soviet airspace was a deliberate, carefully planned reconnaissance operation. It was controlled from certain centers in the United States and Japan, the marshal said. - The civilian aircraft for it was deliberately chosen, not counting, and possibly even counting on human casualties. Hence all the grave consequences of this extraordinary "incident", as they call it in the Western press. Naturally, all responsibility for what happened falls entirely on its organizers.”

It is known that the military of the USSR did not allow American ships to the place of emergency.

Domestic divers managed to quickly find and raise the black boxes to the surface.

However, in international organization Civil aviation records of the recorders were transferred only ten years later by personal order of the President of Russia and no sensational details were disclosed.

The head of state met with the relatives of the victims. In the course of the events, Yeltsin handed over to the Korean side and the Americans documents related to the disaster: a transcript of the radio exchange of the KE007 crew with other aircraft and with the air traffic control service, the text of the magnetic recording of the flight recorder, a certificate on the analysis of information from the emergency recorder, the conclusions of the expert groups of the Ministry of Defense, the KGB and the Ministry of Aviation Industry , texts of reports to Andropov from various departments.

Despite the search work with the participation of Soviet, American and Japanese specialists, not a single fragment was identified as the remains of a passenger.

There is evidence that soldiers and officers from the unit stationed on Cape Krillon on Sakhalin found decayed fragments of clothing thrown by the tide, old shoes, women's handbags, umbrellas and other things that were not very similar to the luggage of respectable passengers...

Air Force officer Osipovich died in 2015. And in 2003, he said "" that the Boeing with passengers was shot down ... by the Americans.

“They needed a provocation,” a retired lieutenant colonel argued. - Come out - good. It won't work either. everything was beneficial. So, there were two planes. I shot down not a passenger, but a scout. And the liner with passengers was shot down by the Americans, in order to later declare that the USSR is an evil empire! And to convince the world that in fact there was no intelligence officer!

Many of us received double salaries for the plane I shot down. Everyone but me. Is there justice? And I don’t even want to talk about the order! Handed over in a year! "For success in military and political training."

It should be noted that there were those abroad who denied the American version of the disaster. For example, the Frenchman Michel Brun, in his book “The Sakhalin Incident” published during the late perestroika period, insisted that on September 1, 1983, at least nine aircraft simultaneously invaded the USSR, and the Korean Boeing allegedly got in touch ... 45 minutes after Osipovich's attack, which, in his opinion, was not.

“For the Americans, even for those who do not believe the American version of events, it is extremely difficult to accept that there was a serious collision between Soviet and American military aircraft,

ending in losses on the American side, a clash that has remained a secret all these years. Their hesitation is understandable. But they do not agree with what my investigation shows, ”Brun’s book says. He goes on to explain the evidence of the interceptions and destruction of aircraft over Sakhalin...

“The abundance of details in the statements of witnesses allows us to highlight several episodes of pursuit and destruction of intruder aircraft by different fighter pilots and the discovery of several different wrecks by Soviet divers in various parts of the seabed off the coast of Sakhalin,” Brun is convinced. “However, it is the Russian documents submitted to ICAO for the 1993 report and attached to Newsletter #1 that provide the most dramatic evidence of the scale of the Sakhalin events and allow us to understand the apparent contradictions between Japanese and American data.”

Retired Japanese intelligence officer Yoshiro Tanaki, in his book The Truth About Flight KAL 007, concludes that "US intelligence agencies deliberately diverted a passenger plane into Soviet airspace."

“The goal is to cause a commotion in the air defense system of the Soviet Far East, which was modernized and significantly strengthened a year before the tragedy, and to force them to turn on the “silent” radar stations in peacetime,” the author writes.